Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68165
SOMATIC RESEARCH I am calling for action. I am not satisfied being the invisible practitioner in an invisible profession. Our clients are speaking out with their dollars. ATTEND RESEARCH CONFERENCES There are many organized networking events that take place at research conferences. Researchers want to mingle with clinicians in the hopes that conversations and thoughtful debate might help them refine their hypotheses and protocols and tighten up their research designs. There are also opportunities for comment after each research presentation; attendees are encouraged to question researchers and offer suggestions for further study. There are ground-level opportunities available to assist you in both of these endeavors through the MTF. Massagetherapyfoundation. org has a complete guide to writing case reports, and you can win money and get published through the practitioner or student case report contests. Even if you don't win with your first submission, you will receive valuable feedback that will help you gain experience and skills. The gold award winner for the 2008 Practitioner Case Report contest, Erika Larson, submitted a report in 2007 and received an honorable mention. She credits her initial involvement with the contest for boosting her confidence and skills. Another opportunity is the second Highlighting Massage Therapy in Complementary and Integrative Medicine (CIM) Research conference, May 13-15, 2010, in Seattle. With an emphasis on massage and bodywork, you will feel right at home listening to researchers share information that directly impacts your business and your clients' health and well-being. You will learn valuable information about low-back pain: how the fascia is involved from Dr. Helene Longevin, and how massage can improve low-back pain from Dr. Dan Cherkin. Experts will speak on public health and how to ensure massage is integrated into the new prevention and wellness paradigm for health care. Many opportunities are available for sharing your hypotheses about massage with researchers. LAY OF THE LAND What is the status of massage research? How do massage and bodywork keep pace with the rise in public use of CAM? Is massage research funded and published at the same rates as other CAM professions? A rigorous overview of massage research was published in IJTMB in June 2009.2 That article represents the mind meld of 37 conference attendees, including researchers, educators, practitioners, and other health professionals interested in massage research at the North American Research Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine (NARCCIM). The purpose of this workshop and summarizing article is to take stock of the current state of massage research, to explore approaches, directions, and strategies and to influence the future of massage research. We will explore it more fully in a future column. For now, let's take a quick look at some statistics from this and other articles. In the 2007 National Health Survey on Costs of Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Frequency of Visits to CAM Practitioners: United States, 83 million American adults spent $33.9 billion on CAM practitioners and CAM products.3 Massage was ranked number two for out-of-pocket expense, second only to natural products. This means that people paid more money out of pocket for massage therapy than chiropractic and osteopathic treatments, acupuncture, naturopathy, homeopathy, yoga, etc. Even though we outranked all other practitioner visits for out- of-pocket expenses, the headlines never mentioned massage. The Los Angeles Times headline read, "Americans spend $34 billion a year connect with your colleagues on massageprofessionals.com 119