These guidelines were prepared by the WHO Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention; the Department of Essential Medicines and Health Products; the Department of Service Delivery and Safety; the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse; and the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, Department of Noncommunicable Disease Management. These departments were represented on the WHO Steering Group for the Medical Management of Cancer Pain in Adults and Adolescents Guidelines.

Responsible technical officer: Dr Cherian Varghese

WHO Steering Group members: Marie-Charlotte Bouesseau, Nicolas Clark, Andre Ilbawi, Taskeen Khan, Nicola Magrini and Slim Slama.

The WHO Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention would like to thank the members of the Guideline Development Group (GDG) for the commitment, enthusiasm and expertise that they contributed.

GDG members: Gauhar Afsan, Zipporah Ali, Chioma Asuzu, Eduardo Bruera, Jim Cleary¹, Malcolm Dobbin, Kathy Foley, Harmala Gupta, Eric Krakauer², Philip Larkin, Diederik Lohman, Sebastien Moine, Hibah Osman, Lukas Radbruch, MR Rajagopal, Paul Sebastian, Nandi Siegfried, Catherine Stannard, Jane Turner, Verna Vanderpuye, Verna Walker-Edwards.

The Department is grateful for the contributions of the guideline External Review Group for peer reviewing the guidelines.

ERG members: Samy Alsirafy, Roger Chou, Michel Daher, Beena Devi, Julia Downing, Andy Gray, Parmanand Jain, Brian Kelly, Emmanuel Luyirika, Geoff Mitchell, Anil Paleri, Tania Pastrana, Nguyen Thi Phuong Cham, Maggie Watson.

Special appreciation and gratitude are extended to Dr Nandi Siegfried, the guideline methodologist and GDG meetings’ co-chair, the Systematic Review team from Brown University, led by Dr Ethan Balk, and the Network Meta-Analysis team from University of Bern, led by Dr Georgia Salanti, and Dr Eduardo Bruera, the co-chair of the GDG meetings. All went the extra mile to ensure the high quality and timeliness of the reviews and guidelines.

Systematic Review team members: Ethan M Balk (Lead), Gaelen P Adam, Mengyang Di, Hannah J Kimmel, Matthew Olean, Jessica K Roydhouse, Bryant Smith, Andrew R Zullo.

Network Meta-analysis team members: Georgia Salanti (Lead), Orestis Efthimiou, Adriani Nikolakopoulou.

The WHO Guidelines Review Committee Secretariat led by Dr Susan L Norris supported the GDG throughout the guideline development process.

Joel Tarel, Angela Baffoe and Sophie Schmitt provided administrative support and designisgood.info for the design and layout of the document.

These guidelines were produced under the leadership of Dr Etienne Krug, Director, WHO Department for Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention. The responsible technical officers for these guidelines were Dr Belinda Loring until 2016 July and Dr Cherian Varghese, with additional coordination and writing by Mr Lee Sharkey, Dr Eric Krakauer and Dr Taskeen Khan.

Footnotes

1

Jim Cleary, representing the University of Wisconsin-Madison Pain and Policies Studies Group was an observer at the first scoping meeting. He was then appointed to the GDG as a member.

2

Eric Krakauer first joined the guideline development process as a member of the WHO Steering Committee, and following his departure from WHO joined the GDG as a member.