# Measuring the Impact of Racism-Induced Medical Mistrust on Placebo Analgesia.

> **NIH NIH K23** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $191,395

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The overall goal of this five-year K23 Mentored Career Development Award is to provide critical research and
career development opportunities that will facilitate the candidate’s long-term career goal of being a leading
expert in neuropsychosocial mechanisms of pain treatment responses, particularly for underserved racial/ethnic
groups. The proposed K23 activities will build on the candidate’s background in mind-body pain interventions,
affective pain mechanisms, and resting-state fMRI methods through the completion of workshops, online
coursework, mentor meetings, seminars, and conferences in the following areas: [1] pain disparities, [2]
community-engaged research, [3] placebo analgesia, and [4] task-based fMRI. The candidate has assembled
an outstanding team of co-mentors with expertise in pain disparities (primary mentor Dr. Claudia Campbell),
community-engaged research (co-mentor Dr. Michele Evans), placebo analgesia (co-mentor Dr. Luana Colloca),
and task-based fMRI (co-mentor Dr. Lauren Atlas) who will oversee her progress. Skills learned through the K23
career development plan will be practically applied in the completion of a research project examining the
association between racism-induced medical mistrust (i.e., mistrust of healthcare systems due to the effects of
structural and interpersonal racism), placebo analgesia (i.e., pain relief resultant from neuropsychological
responses to contextual cues), and concomitant brain activity among Black adults living in the US sociocultural
milieu. Placebo analgesia will be induced using a well-established protocol for the fMRI environment. Further,
this project will be the first to collect information about placebo acceptability (i.e., admissibility to placebo as pain
treatment) specifically among Black adults and will query for culturally responsive factors that can help boost
placebo analgesia. Results from this project will provide critical pilot data that will support a large-scale grant
submission aiming to optimize placebo analgesia interventions for US-residing Black adults. Further, the
completion of the career development plan will give the candidate the necessary skills, resources, and
community partnerships to build and maintain an independent program of research using state-of-the-art
methods to improve pain treatment outcomes for underserved racial/ethnic groups.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10347736
- **Project number:** 1K23NS124935-01
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Janelle E Letzen
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $191,395
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-15 → 2022-07-15

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10347736

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10347736, Measuring the Impact of Racism-Induced Medical Mistrust on Placebo Analgesia. (1K23NS124935-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10347736. Licensed CC0.

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