Our team is committed to reducing pain and other symptoms children with complex illnesses may experience. Our goal is to provide the best quality of life possible for our pediatric patients and their families.

Our physicians and psychologists at the UCLA Childhood Pain Research Program work together to carry out research to understand the development of acute to chronic pain in children and how to prevent pain in childhood from progressing to pain in adulthood.

We study risk factors, such as sex differences in pain, the role of menstruation on pain systems in girls, the role of puberty in pain, and how family, genetic, school and social factors can impact a child's pain. We have a special interest in medical conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, and study the brain/pain/gut micro biome relationships, using brain imaging, strategies for studying the efficacy of central pain inhibition, and intestinal bacteria. Our program also has a long history of research on long-term survivors of childhood cancer looking at quality of life, pain, psychological and physical outcomes and developing interventions to reduce distress and pain.

We also study mind-body pain interventions including yoga, mindfulness, hypnotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, among others.

We not only want to know if these treatments work to reduce pain and other symptoms but HOW they work biologically and in whom they work best.

Lonnie Zeltzer, MD, is a Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Director of the Children's Pain and Comfort Care Program. She is a co-author on the Institute of Medicine report on Transforming Pain in America.  She has received a WT Grant Faculty Scholar's Award, a National Cancer Institute Research Career Development Award, a Physician Excellence Award from Trinity Hospice, a UCLA Helene Brown Award for Excellence in Cancer Control Research, a Mayday Pain and Policy Fellowship, and the 2005 Jeffrey Lawson Award for Advocacy in Children's Pain Relief from the American Pain Society (APS).  Her UCLA pain program received a 2009 Clinical Centers of Excellence in Pain Management Award from APS and a 2012 award from the Southern California Cancer Pain Initiative.  She was Associate Director of the Patients and Survivors' Program in the UCA Cancer Center and is on the steering committee of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study. She has over 350 publications on pain, palliative care, cancer survivors, or complementary therapies, and her recent book: Pain in Young Chldren and Adults: The Journey Back to Normal (2016).

Dr. Elana Evan is the Director of Program Development and Research for the UCLA Children's Pain Comfort Care Program and is Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UCLA. She received her doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 2005. Her expertise involves treating children with various developmental disabilities, learning problems and functional difficulties associated with chronic pain as well as both serious and life-threatening medical conditions. Her research interests are in the area of pediatric palliative care, childhood communication, coping, and cognitive ability. Dr. Evan completed her doctorate at the American Psychological Association (APA) accredited Fielding Graduate University, her clinical internship at the UCLA (Neuropsychiatric) Semel Institute and Postdoctoral Fellowship in the UCLA Department of Pediatrics. As part of her fellowship she received funding to establish the Children's Comfort Care Program, UCLA's Pediatric Palliative Care program which she directed and developed as a grass-roots effort with involvement of fellow faculty, staff, trainees and parent involvement. In addition to her history of research and clinical training at UCLA, she has also provided therapeutic and educational services throughout the Los Angeles community and has lectured at various universities and at professional and scientific conferences nationally and internationally. Dr. Evan is currently creating a telemedicine component to the UCLA Children's Pain and Comfort Care Clinical Service that was launched in December 2013. This will allow community hospitals to benefit from the highly specialized consultation services her team provides at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. She was also funded by the American Cancer Society and National Palliative Care Research Center to develop a communication intervention for children with serious illnesses to improve quality of life and hopes to transport these therapies into a future model for home palliative care using in-person and telemedicine services.

Laura Payne, PhD is an Assistant Adjunct Professor and clinical psychologist specializing in central mechanisms and psychological factors, such as depression, anxiety, and emotion regulation, related to chronic pain. Dr. Payne received her Ph.D. in 2007 from Boston University and completed her postdoctoral fellowship with the UCLA Pediatric Pain Program from 2007 to 2013. During that time, Dr. Payne was awarded an NIH National Research Service Award to explore the relationship of emotion regulation to chronic pain. She was awarded the UCLA Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Postdoctoral Research in 2010, published her research in scholarly journals, and presented at numerous national meetings and conferences. In 2014, Dr. Payne was awarded a career development grant from the

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to continue her work exploring central pain mechanisms in adolescent girls and young women with primary dysmenorrhea (menstrual cramps). She also received a UCLA Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute Seed Grant to explore the feasibility and acceptability of a behavioral intervention for pain catastrophizing in girls with moderate to severe menstrual pain.