Highlighting Massage Therapy in CAM Research

Massage Therapy Foundation, Inc., Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Highlighting Massage Therapy in CAM Research conference will be held September 22-27, 2005, at the Hyatt Regency, the Albuquerque Convention Center, and the Sheraton Old Town, Albuquerque, NM. The objectives of the conference are to: 1) educate massage practitioners about the research process, 2) provide an opportunity for dissemination of recent massage research, 3) promote communication between CAM researchers and therapeutic massage/bodywork practitioners, and 4) facilitate collaboration between CAM researchers and therapeutic massage/bodywork practitioners. The Highlighting conference is designed to reach three audiences: practitioners of therapeutic massage/bodywork, educators, and researchers/clinicians. The conference consists of three tracks, each designed to appeal particularly to one audience and secondarily to the other two, thereby encouraging collaboration and communication between previously disparate parties who share a common interest in massage therapy research. This conference addresses the need for practitioners to be intimately involved with methodology and research design in order to ensure that the questions and hypotheses raised and the protocols tested reflect the way professional practitioners practice their art and science. It also allows for researchers who are not practitioners to understand the modalities of therapeutic massage and bodywork and the way these modalities are practiced. The conference includes lectures by researchers who have contributed to the body of CAM research generally or to therapeutic massage and bodywork specifically, whose studies are peer-reviewed, and who hold educated opinions regarding the role therapeutic massage and bodywork can play in CAM, integrated health care, and wellness. In addition to lectures about research and the inclusion of posters, presentations will also be made about designing research curricula, pedagogical tools to support research, case study models, and how-to sessions on conducting a research literature search and apply for a research grant. The Highlighting conference, the first of its kind to be held in the United States, is scheduled to occur in alternate years with the Canadian-sponsored International Symposium on the Science of Touch.