Epidemiological case-control studies initially suggested that persons with chronic pain were more likely to report a variety of adverse events early in life. These include, for example, physically and/or emotionally traumatic events (such as motor vehicle accidents, physical and sexual abuse), painful events (including injuries and operations), family circumstances (separation from parents), and socioeconomic factors (such as extreme financial hardship). Although recall bias has been demonstrated in such studies (mainly that people who have had adverse events in early life but subsequently have not experienced ill-health often fail to recall or report the adversity), this does not explain all of the relationships observed . Prospective studies have subsequently confirmed that some adverse events in early life are associated with chronic pain in later life. In this session Macfarlane will review the epidemiological evidence of a relationship, whether it is causal and specific for chronic pain and the mediating factors. He will also provide initial data from the UK Advanced Pain Discovery Programme (APDP) Consortium Against Pain Inequality (CAPE) which seeks to improve how we measure such adversity in early life and is bringing together prospective data from around the world to better understand how early life adversity may lead to chronic pain and improving our understanding of  the mechanism linking them. It is intended to lead to an knowledge of the characteristics of the person, event and circumstances of adversities which lead to an increase risk of chronic pain and possibly designing preventive interventions.