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A/Prof

Joshua Pate

Associate Professor

SoHPR&PH Discipline of Physiotherapy

Orcid identifier0000-0002-1049-3916
  • Associate Professor
    SoHPR&PH Discipline of Physiotherapy
  • University of Technology Sydney, Graduate School of Health, 100 Broadway / PO Box 123, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia
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IMPACT SUMMARY

Joshua Pate’s research has changed how pain understanding can be assessed, discussed and addressed. His team developed the Concept of Pain Inventory (COPI), the first validated child-derived measure of pain understanding, followed by COPI-Adult and COPI-Proxy. These tools enable clinicians and educators to identify misconceptions, target education and evaluate changes in understanding.

 

The measures have generated 226 direct requests and been translated or culturally adapted across nine languages, with Turkish COPI and Danish and Croatian COPI-Adult adaptations published. Queensland Children’s Hospital has used COPI since its validation in 2020 to support pain education. Canberra Health Services uses it before and after pain-management programs; preliminary evaluation of its 12-hour program found group-level improvement exceeding the reported smallest detectable change. The service has also used COPI-Adult with 32 physiotherapists to identify misconceptions and design targeted professional education. Singapore Institute of Technology has used COPI-Adult in research across two public hospitals and longitudinally across four-year physiotherapy and occupational therapy programs.

 

Joshua’s research translation includes the Zoe & Zak’s Pain Hacks and Twirl children’s books and the OneThing video platform. More than 2,000 copies of Zoe & Zak’s Pain Hacks have been distributed, with reported use across over 100 clinics and schools. In a 2025 study involving 17 children, 14 reported a changed understanding of pain and 80% preferred the pain-science book, providing evaluated proof-of-concept while identifying the need for larger trials.

 

His public engagement extends this work beyond clinical and educational settings. His TED-Ed animations have attracted more than two million views, his ten articles for The Conversation have received more than 500,000 reads, and Chronic Pain Australia incorporated his resources into its 2024 and 2025 Kids in Pain activities.

IMPACT & KNOWLEDGE EXCHANGE

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  • IMPACT STORY
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    Promoting paediatric understanding of science via pain neuroscience discoveries
    1 Jul 2025
    Lead contributors for this impact or knowledge exchange: Pate J
    Chronic pain is a silent thief, robbing children of their education and social connections by causing them to miss an average of 9 weeks of school annually. This is not just affecting a few children per school, one-fifth of children in every classroom is affected by the mostly invisible burdens and stigma of chronic pain. The burdens of paediatric chronic pain extend far beyond missing school. Children with chronic pain are more likely to have a lower quality of life, they are at a higher risk of opioid use and chronic pain as adults, they are more likely to miss out on participating at school and in sport, their parents take more sick leave from work, and overall, chronic pain costs Australia $139 billion per year. But what if we could unlock a child’s ability to ‘turn down the volume’ on their pain? My research suggests we can. My goal is simple: empower children to prevent pain from taking over their lives.