• What is the Massage Therapy Research Consortium?
  The Massage Therapy Research Consortium is a voluntary collaboration of massage schools that are interested in enhancing their own understanding of and participation in research on therapeutic massage. They have banded together to provide mutual support and to pool resources for joint educational and research activities
• What is the purpose of the MTRC?
  Our mission statement says "The Massage Therapy Research Consortium advances massage therapy education and practice, and enhances public health, by collaboratively building research capacity in our schools, and by fostering partnerships with research scientists in our communities." Specifically, The Consortium acts as a network for participating schools, providing opportunities to learn, share experiences and expertise, and support the research endeavors of participating schools. We also support participating schools by developing and exchanging ideas and resources in order to support staff and student education and preparedness for schools to become full partners in research.

• Are you taking new schools?
  This Massage Therapy Research Consortium is not currently seeking new schools. The MTRC believes the work of the consortium is best done in a small group and we encourage other schools or individuals interested in increasing their research-related capacities to join together to form other consortia. Schools interested in being part of such a consortium may contact us through Janet Kahn, Ph. D. at jkahn@igc.org. We are willing to hear from interested schools, but they must realize that it could easily be over a year before new schools would be considered for participaton.
• Who are the participating schools of the consortium at this time?
  For a complete list of the participating schools' addresses and contact numbers, please visit the Participating Schools section of this website.

• Why and how were these schools selected?
  The impetus for this consortium came from Ben Benjamin (Founder and former president of the Muscular Therapy Institute) and Janet Kahn (Research Assistant Professor in the College of Medicine at the University of Vermont & former president of the AMTA Foundation), who invited a number of schools to meet to consider forming a consortium. Some schools decided not to participate and a few additional schools were invited and have joined to create this group. All these schools meet the following criteria:
  • mature and stable school that is capable of devoting substantial attention to this initiative;
  • school or director has demonstrated leadership within the profession in the past;
  • has a clear interest in furthering massage research awareness and activity at the school level;
  • offers a professional massage training program of at least 600 hours.
  We are aware that there are other schools, not involved in the MTRC, that meet these criteria. Our desire to remain small prohibits including all schools that might be appropriate. We are glad to help other schools form their own consortium.

• What is the MTRC actually doing?
  In year one, initial months were spent defining our purpose, working out internal agreements, external mission, etc. We are now engaged in deepening our own understanding of issues involved in research design, including clinical trials, program evaluation, basic science, and survey research.
  
  In year two we engaged in two small projects. One was assisting Harvard's Osher Center in the development of the Scope of Practice and Delineation of Privileges documents to be used by the massage therapists providing treatment in their new integrative medicine clinic and in ongoing research at the clinic. The second was providing expert consultation on protocol design and other issues for a study of massage for chronic neck pain led by Dr. Karen Sherman at the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle.
  
  In year three we again consulted to the Group Health in Seattle, designing the protocols for a study comparing two different kinds of massage for treatment of chronic low back pain.
  
  We also completed data collection in the school clinics for a qualitative study of clients' description of the effects of massage. We are currently analyzing those data.
  
  We continued work on a taxonomy of therapeutic massage and bodywork which we hope will help all massage researchers.
  
  As Year Four begins we are analyzing the data from the Clinic Client Study, designing a second study to be announced later, and continuing work on the taxonomy. In addition, we are engaged in conversations related to research education within the schools including discussion of the standards of evidence to be used in discussing the effects of massage with students.
  
  In addition, individual schools in the curriculum are engaged in a variety of research-related activities from conducting small studies to forming their own Institutional Review Board to enhancing the research holdings of their libraries.

• What are your future plans?
  We are moving forward one step at a time.
  
  As we complete the Clinic Client Study we are developing plans for a study that will teach clinical trial skills and can be done in the school classrooms.
  
  We are also looking at ways to help more practicing massage therapists become involved in research, but that is still some time away as we need to finish current projects.

• Are you affiliated with any professional association or other organization?
  We have no affiliation with any professional association or other organization serving the massage therapy profession. It is our strong belief that resources are generally scarce enough in our field that all organizations should do their best not to duplicate one another's work. To that end we will stay in touch with organizations where there is chance of overlap, but there is no formal affiliation in any direction.
• If other schools or organizations form research consortia as you suggest, will they be competitive with the MTRC, collaborative with the MTRC, or what?
  We think there is plenty of room within our profession for other such groups, some of which might be regional, some of which might have a slightly different or more specific research focus, and some of which might be much like this consortium. Generally we would not consider them to be competitive with us, and we would be open to sharing useful information from our own process, as we did at the Massage Therapy Foundation's research conference in Albuquerque in September 2005. Of course, if we are all successful there might be a day when we are in competition with one another when applying to specific funding sources for research support, just as one could consider universities to be in competition with one another when applying to NIH. That will be a great day for the massage therapy profession, and we look forward to it! It certainly is possible that there would be some project on which it would make sense to collaborate with another consortium at some point down the road, although again, we think there is a lot of work that is best done by a relatively small group. We think the smallness enhances both efficiency and the depth of involvement by each school.

• How do we contact you for more information?
  You may contact the director of any of the participating schools for information about that school and its participation in the consortium. For more general information about the consortium contact Janet Kahn, Ph. D. at jkahn@igc.org.