Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/1078860
A connection between massage therapy, health promotion, and positive health messaging is obvious. Because of the focused time spent during a massage session, the potential is great for massage therapists to have impact on client health and related behaviors beyond treatment effects through education and behavior modeling. When I was a practicing massage therapist, I did my best to model healthy living and behaviors to increase my personal and field credibility with clients and others who knew I was a massage therapist. This credibility afforded me the opportunity to support clients during health behavior changes such as quitting smoking, decreasing sedentariness, or seeking preventive or diagnostic screening. Massage therapy is described as encompassing more than just the massage application because it also consists of "non-hands-on components including health promotion and education messages for self-care and health maintenance." 3 We all likely have anecdotes about how either the time we get to spend with clients, or the developed trusting relationship with a client, afforded the opportunity to provide or reinforce positive health messaging. My standout anecdote is how the trusting relationship I had with a longtime doctor-abhorrent client resulted in them getting a cancer screening that likely saved their life. Despite the fact that health promotion and positive health messaging is a part of massage therapy, little related research exists. "Advancing Health Promotion Through Massage Therapy Practice: A Cross-Sectional Survey Study" was published in 2018 in Preventive Medicine Reports and is a product of the collaborative efforts of researchers from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine and National University of Health Sciences. 4 Researchers involved in the study wanted to know massage therapists' practices and attitudes toward health promotion; which health promotion messages or practices massage therapists include as part of their treatments; what health promotion activity barriers exist for massage therapists; and the extent to which therapist characteristics or attitudes are associated with perceived barriers. Survey methodology was used in gathering data to address these questions, and participants were recruited in two waves. The first wave sought to recruit massage therapists practicing in the United States exclusively through MassageNet, while the second wave added social media recruitment efforts to the PBRN outreach. The three-month recruitment efforts yielded 256 respondents and 182 completed surveys for data analysis. Between one and nine massage therapists from most states participated in the survey, with the exception of New York and Illinois, which each provided 19 and 24 respondents, respectively. No respondents were from Washington, D.C., Ohio, Mississippi, North or South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana, or Delaware. There were several sample attributes that were more prominent than others, with only the high proportion of female (82 percent) and white (84 percent) participants relatively reflective of the massage therapy field. For example, the study sample's median age of approximately 50 years is older than that of the general profession (45 years) and more than 55 percent of the study sample earned a bachelor's degree or higher compared to industry reports suggesting less than 40 percent of those in the massage field hold a bachelor's degree or higher. In addition, the study sample were very experienced, with fewer than 35 percent reporting being in the profession for less than 10 years and most having greater than 600 foundational training hours and over 200 hours of continuing education. Over 90 percent of respondents indicated they agreed or strongly agreed that it is important for massage therapists to include health promotion messages as part of their work with clients/patients, and half Yo u r M & B i s w o r t h 2 C E s ! G o t o w w w. a b m p . c o m / c e t o l e a r n m o r e . 45 Over 90 percent of respondents indicated they agreed or strongly agreed that it is important for massage therapists to include health promotion messages as part of their work with clients/ patients, and half thought therapists should spend more time conveying such messages.