Americans are all too familiar with the opioid crisis that has had a grasp on the United States for over two decades. Purdue Pharma initiated a long period of liberal opioid prescribing in the 80s and 90s but physicians changed their habits in the 2010s, prescribing more conservatively than ever before. This shift was prompted by the publishing of the 2016 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC guidelines urged physicians to limit opioid prescriptions, keep opioids below a specific threshold, require pain patients to sign pain contracts that limited their care, and regularly drug test patients. Patients themselves and pain management advocates have been in strong opposition of these guidelines, citing that the guidelines would prevent treatment access for pain patients that had been prescribed opioids for decades to manage indescribable pain. There is extensive research that has been conducted on the opioid crisis, but little research has focused on the experience of pain patients. The purpose of this project is to examine how pain patients and pain management advocates navigate a changing legal and medical environment in which physicians are hesitant to prescribe and in which the experience of pain patients is swallowed by the danger of increasing overdose deaths.

Cameron would like to thank Dr. Liz Chiarello for the unwavering support throughout the last three, nearly four years. Cameron is grateful to have gotten invaluable experience in academic research with Dr. Chiarello; but more importantly, she is thankful for the detailed and dedicated mentorship that Dr. Chiarello has provided. The past three years have challenged Cameron and opened her eyes to the possibilities of academic research, none of which would have been possible without Dr. Chiarello. Thank you is hardly enough.