Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and Intervention (EMI) in Chronic Pain: Emerging Approaches and Clinical Implications

Chronic pain is a multidimensional condition that encompasses sensory, affective, and cognitive components, exerting a significant impact on physical health, psychological wellbeing, functional capacity, and quality of life. Traditional assessment and intervention strategies often fall short in capturing the dynamic and fluctuating nature of the condition, limiting their ability to provide immediate responses tailored to the real-time experiences of people living with chronic pain. Recent research on Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and Ecological Momentary Interventions (EMI) offers new opportunities to capture and address these complexities in real-world settings. Emerging evidence highlights the potential of EMA and EMI to inform the development of tailored clinical strategies and interventions to improve pain management. This topic further underscores the need for continued research into their broader clinical and methodological applications.

This Research Topic aims to explore the applications of EMA and EMI to advance integrative pain management for individuals living with chronic pain. It also seeks to outline methodologies for delivering personalized, adaptive interventions that can influence trajectories of pain- and well-being-related outcomes in daily life. Key objectives include: (1) assessing the validity, reliability, and clinical utility of EMA; (2) examining the efficacy and effectiveness of EMI; (3) testing hypotheses regarding their integration into clinical practice; and (4) evaluating their potential to deliver precise, data-driven interventions that adapt to the fluctuating states of people living with chronic pain.

This collection welcomes articles addressing, but not limited to:
• Innovative personalization of interventions through real-time data customization to optimize psychological and functional outcomes.
• Integration of digital phenotyping with EMA for enhanced pain and mood prediction (e.g., wearable technology, smartphone-based sensing, activity monitoring).
• Use of EMIs to foster behavioral and cognitive adaptations, such as mindfulness and coping strategies, and values-based approaches.
• Identification and discussion of implementation barriers, including digital literacy, accessibility, patient engagement, and healthcare system integration.
• Long-term outcomes focusing on the sustainability of psychological and functional adjustments and intervention efficacy.
• Methodological innovations in EMA to capture mechanisms of change (e.g., pain catastrophizing, affect regulation, physical activity) in daily life.
• Clinical trials, hybrid effectiveness–implementation studies, and translational models integrating EMA/EMI into routine pain management.

Contributions across diverse methodologies and study designs are welcome, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, clinical trials, and implementation studies.

These insights will contribute to a deeper understanding of how EMA and EMI can be implemented to address ongoing challenges and advance precision, integrative, and patient-centered approaches to pain management, with particular emphasis on psychological and behavioral care, within the context of chronic pain.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Specialty Grand Challenge
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review

Keywords: chronic pain, EMA, EMI, Pain Management, Psychological Wellbeing, Digital Health, Behavioral Interventions, Clinical Implementation, Care Approaches

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.