Dr. Staud is part of a research initiative at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) named HEAL. HEAL stands for Helping to End Addiction Long-term. It is an initiative designed to speed scientific solutions to cut down on the national opioid public health crisis as quickly as possible. The project intends to build upon the current knowledge of the mechanisms involved in pain and addiction, develop and test new treatment models, and to integrate behavioral interventions to help manage pain. This initiative is providing funding for many projects with similar goals to our own research, such as our approach to individualized medicine. We are currently using quantitative sensory testing to develop predictors for targeted pain treatments in the future.