Dr. Roger Freeman (DDS) of Infectious Awareables (IA), the fashionable health education company (or the  health-educating fashion company), has chosen the winning design for the challenge he issued earlier this year to illustrate pain relief.

The design, at left, is called “Whew!” and was created by Darren Nelson of Bountiful, Utah.

The design will appear on IA silk scarves, which are available for  $39.95 (U.S.) each. (The company contributes a portion of proceeds to research, education or support associated with non-profit public health agencies and organizations.)

“This creative design – symbolizing the chaos of pain transitioning to calmer waters, white clouds and sunshine of butterflies – is our interpretation” of the design, Dr. Freeman wrote in his latest newsletter. He told me he thinks the design works best on a scarf, which is also fitting because more women suffer chronic pain than men.

He is still looking for a pain-relief design for a necktie. Since 1997, IA has been combining fashion with health education.

The company designs and sells silk ties, silk scarves, bow ties and boxers bearing colourful electron micrographs of pathogens of public health interest (the fashion part) with tags that provide brief health information (the education part). Designs include anthrax, influenza, gonorrhea, HIV, C. difficile and Ebola, as well as dust mites, bed bugs and dental plaque.

In February, Dr. Freeman put out a call for designs representing pain relief, as a follow-up to a custom design the firm produced last year of facial pain in collaboration with TNA-The Facial Pain Association and its research division, the Facial Pain Research Foundation, organizations dealing with neuropathic face pain including trigeminal neuralgia.

“As usual, we’ll be using the science as basis for our design,” he said at the time.

“In keeping with our wearability standards, we’re also designing creative accents to the science — in this case, a representation of what sufferers might sense when the ‘hurt’ stops. In other words, an artistic equivalent of … ‘whew!’ “~TM