ACRC Academy student Sam Andres presents her work at SCAN and SPaRC

The project, at the time titled “Trajectories of pain and cognitive function: Evidence of coupled change in a cohort of English community-dwelling older adults”, was developed by Dr Chloe Fawns-Ritchie and proposed in March 2025. It involved applying a method of quantitative analysis I’d never used before to data on pain and cognitive function in order to better understand how they relate to each other. From the get go we agreed to aim to publish this work and as the project reached its end in August, I realised a lot of effort would need to be put into the final report to transform it into a publishable manuscript. With Professor Simon Cox added to the author list, we took great strides towards this aim.

As the results of the analyses came in, Chloe was aware of two amazing opportunities to share our findings coming up in the calendar. She suggested we submit an abstract and both got accepted for a talk.

On the 21^st of November, I made my way to Glasgow to present my results at the Scottish Cognitive Ageing Network (SCAN), a group which brings together researchers based in various Scottish academic institutions interested in cognitive ageing (they meet twice a year and you might see some familiar faces on their home page). The conference was fantastic, with presentations ranging from the effects of age-based stereotypes on intergenerational relationships to the recent development of a conversation guide around care for older adults. As I expected, the attendees were quite familiar with the type of complex modelling I applied to the data and some really pertinent questions arose. Although I felt that I was put on the spot by some of them, Chloe assured me that my responses were wholly adequate. 

Later, on the 5^th of December I presented the same findings to the Scottish Pain Research Community (SPaRC)’s 15^th annual meeting in Dundee; although I made sure to adapt my language to be inclusive of the attendees with lived experience in the room. This yearly meeting connects clinicians, researchers, members of the public and the Scottish government to promote collaborations and disseminate findings around pain research (find out more here). The breadth of talks at this conference was tremendous – the language we use around pain, the effect of adverse childhood experiences, experiments on mice uncovering new mechanisms in the neurons, the impact of certain painkillers on the body... One particularly memorable moment of this meeting was the “Datablitz” during which fifteen or so researchers must present the content of their poster in front of the audience in less than 60 seconds. All of a sudden I was glad I was given 15 minutes to describe my work!

Overall, both conferences were a kind and welcoming space to practice translating insights from my findings to a new audience and connect with other researchers in the field. And I know that the challenging questions I was met with were a good preparation for the peer review process of my publication – which should be submitted to a journal very soon (how exciting!). So, I look forward to sharing the results of my research with you when the paper is published. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to me if you would like to know more.