Professor & Associate Dean, University of Maryland

Interest Statement

My own work and interest in pain treatment for women comes from my research in pain treatment and management more broadly. Pain, as a general matter, is under treated for both sexes in this country. Women, however, for a variety of reasons, although more likely than men to experience painful conditions and diseases, are also more likely to be inadequately treated for their pain.
When I began to research the issue of how women experience pain and how difficult it is for women to find a physician who will listen to them and appropriately treat their pain I was incensed and felt compelled to write an article that would share my findings on the mismatch between women’s greater sensitivity to and experience of pain and their obtaining adequate pain treatment. As a result, I co-authored “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,” which was published in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. Subsequently, I published “Under treating Pain in Women: A Risky Practice,” in Law, Ethics and Gender in Medicine. The former provided the impetus for a special feature in the New York Times on women and pain: “Hurting More, Helped Less? When it Comes to Enduring Pain, Women Have Cause for Complaint” (June 23, 2002).
My more recent work on pain treatment focuses on legal obstacles to the prescribing of opioids and the legal risks faced by physicians who attempt to treat chronic pain.

Biography

Diane E. Hoffmann, JD, MS, is Professor of Law, Associate Dean of Academic Programs, and Director of the Law & Health Care Program at the University of Maryland School of Law. She received her law degree from Harvard Law School and her Master’s degree from Harvard School of Public Health. She has taught Torts, Law and Medicine, Health Care Law, Legal Problems of the Elderly, Critical Issues in Health Care, Research with Human Subjects, and Health Care for the Poor.

Her research interests include issues at the intersection of law, health care, ethics and public policy such as advance directives, obstacles to adequate pain treatment, end-of-life care and termination of life support, genetics, regulation of human subject research, and of managed care. She has served as a member of a number of ethics committees including those at University of Maryland Medical Systems, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, and the VA Medical Center in Baltimore. She has also served as a member of the IRB at the University of Maryland. From June 1994 to May 1995, while on leave from the law school, she served as the Acting Staff Director of the Senate Subcommittee on Aging and was responsible for all health care and aging legislation for U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski.

From 1997 to 2004, she was a Mayday Scholar focusing much of her research and scholarship on legal and financial obstacles to the management of pain. She has published several articles in this area: “The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain,” “Achieving the Right Balance in Oversight of Physician Opioid Prescribing for Pain: The Role of State Medical Boards,” “Pain Management and Palliative Care in the Era of Managed Care: Issues for Health Insurers,” and “Dying in America: Policies that Deter Adequate End of Life Care in Nursing Homes.” Her current research includes a study of the use of health related genetic tests in the courtroom and an article on the criminal prosecution of physicians for prescription of opiods.