Rajcevich Schwer, A., McPherson-Isbell, G., McCracken, K., Raftery-Helmer, J., Stoner, A., & Tran, S. T. (2026, April 22-25). Emotion-focused pain-coping moderates the relationship between discrimination and health-related quality of life in emerging adults [Poster presentation].Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, United States.

In individuals with chronic pain, experiences of discrimination are associated with worse health-related quality of life (HRQoL), (Molina et al., 2019). Previous research suggests that pain-coping strategies may be effective in mitigating the negative impacts of discrimination (Terry et al., 2020). However, there is limited research analyzing whether various pain-coping strategies are associated with improvements in HRQoL. This study sought to examine whether pain-coping strategies buffer the relationship between perceived discrimination and HRQoL in emerging adults living with pain. We hypothesized that individuals living with pain who experience higher levels of discrimination would report poorer HRQoL. We also hypothesized that individuals who frequently use coping strategies would report better HRQoL, buffering the negative effects of discrimination. Our study   included 631 undergraduate students with chronic and acute pain, who completed the Adolescent Discrimination Distress Index, the Brief COPE and Pain Coping Questionnaire (PCQ), and the RAND SF-36 Health Survey. Pain-specific emotion-focused coping (PCQ) moderated the relationship between discrimination and general health. At lower levels of discrimination, less emotion-focused coping was associated with better health; however, at higher levels of discrimination, there was generally worse health regardless of emotion-focused coping (b = 4.01, SE = 1.24, p = 0.0014). Interestingly, emotion-focused coping for general stressors seemed to buffer the negative effects of discrimination, while lower coping was related to steeper declines in general health with discrimination (b = 5.12, SE = 2.57, p = 0.0473). Avoidance-coping moderated the relationship between discrimination and emotional and social functioning, where more avoidance coping was related to worse emotional and social functioning, and less avoidance coping seemed to buffer the effect of discrimination (b = 3.65, SE = 1.72, p = 0.0342 and b = 3.95, SE = 2.15, p = .067, respectively). Emotion-focused coping moderates the impact of discrimination on HRQoL, whereas avoidance coping is associated with worse emotional and social functioning. Our findings highlight that the use of coping strategies can mitigate the negative impacts of discrimination, but there is a complex relationship between discrimination, coping strategies, and HRQoL in this population. More work is needed to further unravel this association to better support improved HRQoL. 

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