Our Story: How a Question Sparked a Movement in Pain Care

It all started when one of our founders, Christine Sotmary, was speaking with Dr. John Rosa, a renowned expert in pain management. He was describing the multi-disciplinary approach he used in his clinics, and a simple but powerful question came to her: "How can we duplicate this in New York?" That single question opened a door. Dr. Rosa was connected to a Department of Defense RFP, backed by a $1 billion grant to integrate this care into the VA system nationwide. He approached us to help, to be subcontractors, and in that moment, the seed for Anodunos was planted.

Building Our Team

To bring this idea to life, we had to build the right team. Christine reached out to the two of us, Monica Demitor and Jennifer Trepeck. We were both in the middle of career transitions, and we brought with us decades of experience in running businesses and deep expertise in different aspects of integrative care. Most importantly, all three of us had hands-on experience with patients and a focus on treating the "whole person" long before it became a popular phrase. Our skills were complementary, our passion was shared, and we knew we could build something meaningful together.

Our path wasn't straight. We started with a vision for a brick-and-mortar business, a "white label" service for healthcare providers where we would source integrative practitioners and recommend combinations of modalities. We were, in essence, creating the early concept of the patient navigator from the ground up—crafting intake forms, documents to collect data, and systems to make the approach work.

From there, our vision evolved to be fully virtual, a direct-to-consumer model with structured packages for ease of use. We went through a startup accelerator, constantly refining our approach and looking for our beachhead in the market, which eventually connected us to the US Pain Foundation. However, it was through our advocacy work that we had our biggest realization. We recognized a profound and deep gap in education. It became clear that our best and most impactful product wasn't sourcing providers but creating them. Our mission shifted from providing a service to empowering a movement through education.

Crafting Our Curriculum

With this new focus, we poured everything we had into creating our curriculum. Each of us brought past experience in writing and teaching to the table. We synthesized our decades of hands-on experience, the latest research, and successful approaches from international examples to build a system that addresses the real-world challenges in care. This effort resulted in two distinct courses: one to train Chronic Pain Navigators and another for Chronic Pain Providers.

We developed a comprehensive workbook to act as a companion, including critical resource documents. We also enriched the curriculum by adding powerful video interviews with patients and providers to bring the material to life. This is more than just a course; it's the culmination of our life's work.

Our Work in Advocacy

From our first meeting with local legislators like Colin Smith and Vedat Gashi, and then with NYS Senator Pete Harckham, before the COVID pandemic, the Anodunos team has been deeply engaged in advocacy work and networking, fighting for a better standard of care from the ground up.

Today, we continue to advance our mission through grants, networking, research, and collaborations. We present at conferences, share our model, and spread the word about this necessary evolution in healthcare.

This is a collective mission, and we invite you to be a part of it.