Guidance to Practice: Applying CDC Recommendations for Effective Pain Management and Opioid Prescribing

Program Details

Presenter: Maureen Strohm, M.D., FAAFP, DFASAM, Program Director, Addiction Medicine Fellowship, HCA Sunrise Health GME Consortium, Las Vegas, Nevada

Provides 1.00 hour of CE/CME credit (Presented on August 31, 2026, Reviewed September 15, 2026, Expires September 15, 2028)
Provides CME credit toward the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners' requirement for 2 hours of training related to ethics, pain management, or addiction care during each licensure period.

Online CME Credit Fee: $50.00
Credit must be claimed with 30 days of registering.

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Overview

Effective pain management requires clinicians to balance the need to relieve pain, improve function, and support quality of life with the potential risks associated with opioid therapy. This session will provide an overview of evidence-informed best practices for treating acute, subacute, and chronic pain, guided by the CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain.

Participants will examine key considerations for determining whether and how opioids should be incorporated into an individualized pain treatment plan, including the use of nonopioid and nonpharmacologic therapies, opioid selection and dosage, treatment duration, follow-up, and strategies for reducing potential harms. The session will emphasize shared decision-making, patient-centered care, and the importance of avoiding the rigid or inflexible application of clinical recommendations. Participants will leave with practical knowledge to support safer, more effective, and individualized pain care across diverse clinical settings.

This session topic is part of a series presented by the PACT Coalition for Safe and Drug-Free Communities to address substance misuse through the Strategic Prevention Framework community-based process and work in collaboration with its members and partners to address policy, system and environmental change. To view all session topics available in this series, please click on PACT Coalition for Safe and Drug-Free Communities Program Series. 

Learning Objectives

Following participation in this course, participants should be able to:

  • Differentiate key treatment considerations for acute, subacute, and chronic pain based on the CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain
  • Identify evidence-informed nonopioid, nonpharmacologic, and opioid treatment options that may be incorporated into individualized pain management plans
  • Apply CDC recommendations related to initiating opioid therapy, selecting medications and dosages, determining treatment duration, and conducting appropriate follow-up
  • Describe strategies for assessing patient risk, reducing potential opioid-related harms, and engaging patients in shared decision-making throughout pain treatment

Program Faculty

Maureen Strohm, M.D., FAAFP, DFASAM

Program Director, Addiction Medicine Fellowship, HCA Sunrise Health GME Consortium, Las Vegas, Nevada

Dr. Maureen Strohm is an addiction medicine specialist, focusing exclusively in this field after many years as a family physician. She is currently the founding program director for HCA Sunrise Health’s inaugural Addiction Medicine Fellowship in Las Vegas, NV – the first addiction medicine fellowship in Nevada. Dr. Strohm has a long career as a medical educator and physician, following her personal and professional vision as “Learning through caring – with our patients as our first teachers” – a philosophy that imbues her work with health professions students, resident physicians in training, and colleagues. To support the need for education and the potential for early intervention and treatment of individuals with substance use disorders, she and her addiction medicine colleagues are reactivating the Nevada Society of Addiction Medicine.

Prior to shifting her focus to Addiction Medicine, Dr. Strohm founded 2 family medicine residency programs, including HCA Sunrise Health’s Family Medicine Residency here at Southern Hills Hospital in Las Vegas in 2017 and one in Rancho Mirage, California. Previously, she spent 25 years on faculty at Keck USC School of Medicine as Family Medicine Program Director in downtown Los Angeles. She joined the Keck USC faculty during her service in downtown LA and East Los Angeles as a National Health Service Corps scholar after completing medical school at Georgetown University School of Medicine and specialty training at the UCLA Family Medicine Residency.

Over the years, her passion for medical education has been a key focus, combining the fundamentals of doctor-patient communication, family dynamics, the bio-psycho-social model, and clinical care of one of most marginalized patient groups in healthcare today – patients and families with substance use disorders.

Program Support

This project has been funded by grant number NH28CE003534 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by the CDC, or the U.S. Government.