Parameters of Pain Care: Mitigating Racial Disparities in Patients with Chronic Pain

Carmen R. Green received her MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine (MSU CHM) and was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) National Honor Medical Society. She completed an Anesthesiology residency, subspecialty training in Ambulatory and Obstetrical Anesthesia, and a Pain Medicine fellowship at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) as well as the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute on Aging Butler-Williams Scholar Program, Hedwig von Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program fellowship, and Mayday Pain & Society fellowship. Dr. Green was a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) of the National Academies. Working in the US Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee and the Children and Families Subcommittee, she helped draft the National Pain Care Policy Act, incorporated in the Affordable Care Act, and was thanked in the Congressional Record by Senator Kennedy for contributions to the FDA reauthorization, i.e. including gender and race variables to assess outcomes.

Dr. Green is a tenured Professor of Anesthesiology, Obstetrics & Gynecology, and Health Management & Policy at the University of Michigan’s Schools of Medicine and Public Health, an attending physician in the Back and Pain Center, holds faculty appointments at the Institute for Social Research and Institute for Health Policy and Innovation, and is a faculty associate in the Program for Research on Black Americans, Depression Center, and Cancer Center, where she was elected to Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Green is also an elected fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine, Gerontological Society of America, and Association of University Anesthesiologists. She is a faculty associate in the Program for Research on Black Americans, Depression Center, and Cancer Center. The inaugural Associate Vice President and Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusion at the UMHS, she is the Executive Director of the Healthier Black Elders Center and Co-Director of the Community Core for the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research. Dr. Green was the founding chair for the American Pain Society’s Special Interest Group on Pain and Disparities and chair of the Public Policy Committee.

At the nexus of public health and health care quality, equity, and policy, her health policy relevant and health services research agenda focuses on pain and the social determinants of health. She is the author of germinal and seminal papers that poignantly reveal unequal treatment, disparities, and variability in decision-making, and diminished health care quality, revealing suboptimal access to health and pain care across the life course for women, minorities, and low-income people. An innovator, she often uses narrative medicine and photo voice techniques to promote empathy and healing. Dr. Green published a selective review focusing on the unequal burden of pain in Pain Medicine, which remains the most cited article in the journal’s history and was the guest editor for its special issue on disparities. She was the first to identify hospital security errors.

Dr. Green received several honors, including UMHS Employee of the Year, U-M Woman of Color of the Year for Human Relations, Consumers’ Checkbook’s Top 100 Doctors, Top 1% of Pain Doctors by US News and World Reports, Who’s Who in America, U-M Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, John Liebeskind Pain Management Research Award, Elizabeth Narcessian Award for Outstanding Educational Achievements, and MSU CHM Distinguished Alumni Award. Her federal and state board service includes NAM’s Health Care Services Board, Michigan Governor’s Pain and Symptom Advisory Committee, US Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee, and HHS Oversight Committee for the National Pain Strategy (Disparities Committee Co-Chair) as well as NIH’s Advisory Committee for the Eunice Shriver National Institute of Child and Human Development, Advisory Committee for Research on Women’s Health, and National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research. Dr. Green has made invited presentations across the globe, including the US Congress and Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy. She has worked across the health professional pipeline to achieve a critical mass of minorities and women in academic medicine, biomedical sciences, and higher education. Her former students lead, teach, and inspire others.

An avid swimmer and genealogist, Carmen enjoys travel, photography, college football, and time with friends and family. She began writing poetry, plays, and books as a teen. Carmen also enjoys the creative arts, attending operas and recitals, and recently appeared as the Narrator and Lincoln in Aaron Copeland’s Lincoln’s Portrait with the U-M Life Sciences Orchestra at the historic Hill Auditorium (Ann Arbor).