Ready for Change: a Telehealth, Motivational Enhancement Pre-habilitation Training to Increase Engagement in Children and Families Entering Intensive Interdisciplinary Pain Rehabilitation

Readiness to change, or willingness to engage in a self-management approach to chronic pain and disability, is the most powerful predictor of children's success in intensive pediatric pain rehabilitation. Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET) is an approach that has been effective in increasing readiness to change and treatment engagement for other behaviorally-oriented health interventions. However, MET has never been systemically employed in the context of treating pediatric chronic pain and disability.

This demonstration project seeks to test the effects of a novel telehealth intervention using motivation enhancement therapy to improve patient and parent engagement in, and outcomes of, an intensive interdisciplinary day hospital program for children with complex chronic pain conditions and associated disability, the Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Center (PPRC). The intervention, PPRC-Prep, is a 4 week MET-based telehealth intervention that will be offered to families of children with refractory chronic pain conditions awaiting admission to the PPRC at Boston Children's Hospital at Waltham. Families approved for and awaiting PPRC admission will be randomized to receive PPRC-Prep along with usual care or to a comparison group receiving treatment as usual. Study aims include assessing the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention along with measuring its potential to increase readiness to engage in a self-management approach assessed at time of admission to the PPRC using established measures of readiness to change, pain acceptance, and committed action. Investigators will also evaluate the effects of PPRC-Prep on program length of stay and on reductions of disability and pain at PPRC discharge and short-term (8-week) follow up through comparison of families who undergo PPRC-prep with families who do not undergo PPRC-prep. Demonstrating the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of PPRC-Prep will enable the study team to establish this as a routine component of our approach to care for children with complex, refractory chronic pain and disability.