2025 CAnD3 Keynote Address : The Hidden Epidemic: Chronic Pain in Social and Demographic Context

We are pleased to announce the upcoming CAnD3 Keynote Address, the culminating event of our 2024-2025 Training Program. This hybrid event, hosted annually at the McGill Faculty Club, featuring Professor Anna Zajacova from the University of Western Ontario, will bring together Dragon's Den finalists, CAnD3 alumni, institutional partners, and current Fellows. It commemorates the achievements of our four consecutive cohorts (2020-2025) and introduces the incoming 2025/2026 Fellows.

This year, we are honoured to be having esteemed Professor Anna Zajacova from the University of Western Ontario as a keynote speaker. With her research focus on chronic pain, Prof. Zajacova will examine how chronic pain affects millions but remains poorly understood both in the public imagination and in population science. This talk will take a population perspective on how pain is defined, measured, and distributed—revealing striking social inequalities, surprising measurement challenges, and emerging insights from new experimental data. The discussion will also touch on policy implications, including the opioid crisis and health care responses.

Registration will open for the public in May. Stay tuned for future updates. 

About the Speaker

Anna Zajacova

Anna Zajacova is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. Her research examines chronic pain, focusing on its social determinants and consequences, and disparities among Canadian and U.S. adults. Since earning a PhD in Demography and Sociology from Princeton University, she has published over 90 studies in leading journals such as PAIN, The Journal of Pain, and Demography. Her work, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explores how pain fits into broader population health patterns.