Massage & Bodywork

NOVEMBER | DECEMBER 2017

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required contact and negotiation with multiple decision-makers, which was just beyond this study's management capacity. With regard to the five years' post- foundation education requirement: again, from the logistical side of things, we needed to work with therapists who had had time to build a reliable practice environment and who wouldn't be using their work with the research study as a way to build a clientele. In addition, the five-year experience expectation allowed for study therapists to accumulate more treatment experience and additional education— the logic being that these therapists would have more tools to address the complex cases that people with chronic low-back pain present. JC: You are a trained and licensed massage therapist and a researcher. Which were you for this study? NM: I actually had a couple of separate, but related, roles on this study. When the study was first being designed for the initial National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant submission over 10 years ago, I consulted with the study's principal investigator (William Elder, PhD) on the study design. I was a doctoral student at the time, focused on completing my research training, so was not actually involved in the multiple subsequent grant revisions, funding procurement, or start of the study. Another, even more experienced community massage therapist (Katie Stewart, who also happened to be one of my massage therapy instructors) was the study's primary massage field consultant and served as the massage liaison for the study duration. I officially joined the research team as the study's program manager four years after my initial consulting role and after having completed my doctoral training. The study had commenced about two years prior, and, in addition to my coordinating and management role, I served the study as another massage field liaison and statistician due to the statistics emphasis with my doctoral training. After the study was complete, I organized and analyzed the data and was a key contributor to the results dissemination process. These later roles earned me an investigator and co-lead- author role with Elder, who served as the study's principal investigator. Ultimately, while I am a licensed massage therapist in Kentucky, I did not provide treatments for any of the study participants. I served on the study in a research capacity, but with a deep knowledge of the massage field context and 46 m a s s a g e & b o d y w o r k n o v e m b e r / d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 7 Passing the Torch There is much more Niki Munk, PhD, LMT, could talk about related to the chronic low-back pain study, massage therapy research in general, research education, and research implications for the massage field—and she will. I am pleased to share that authorship of this Somatic Research column will transfer to Munk beginning with the January/February 2018 issue. During my four years on the job, I have enjoyed covering various topics in the column, and I look forward to watching the continued discussion in the years ahead. Dr. Munk and I have actually known each other for quite some time, and it is my pleasure to have Somatic Research in her capable hands. In the next issue, she will pick up the conversation started here about the outcomes of the real-world massage for chronic low-back pain study and discuss potential practice implications of the study's results. For now, I encourage readers interested in learning more about becoming involved in massage research to consider if further education is of interest to them, and if so, explore the various program options at your local or not-so-local universities. The field needs more practitioners trained in research, and who knows, maybe a future Massage & Bodywork Somatic Research column will report on a research study conducted by you!

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