Announcing the 2011 Massage Therapy Foundation Research and Community Service Grants

We are pleased to announce the funding of five Community Service Grants and one Research Grant for the MTF’s 2011 granting cycle.

Community Service Grants
Tina Allen of Liddle Kidz Foundation in Vancouver, WA, was awarded $5,000 for “Massage Therapy for Orphans in Japan.” This grant was sponsored in part by a gift from the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA). Liddle Kidz Foundation has been working for over a decade to bring healing touch to needy infants and children within the United States, Thailand and Vietnam. Allen, the founder of Liddle Kidz, will use the MTF grant to educate 16 pediatric massage therapists who will work on children in orphanages in the greater Tokyo area to reduce the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. The massage therapists will also educate the caregivers of the children so treatments can continue when the therapists aren’t present.

Tieasha James of Bee Busy Wellness Center (BBWC) in Houston, Texas, was awarded $5,000 for “Touching Lives.” This grant is funded in part by a gift from Biotone. The BBWC provides health services for the medically underserved, including women at high risk of drug use/abuse, hypertension, and sexually transmitted infections. The MTF grant will provide funding to add massage to the offerings of the BBWC with an objective of lowering client’s stress levels while increasing self-awareness and taking initiative for the clients own health.

Fermin Flores of Exodus Transitional Community in Brooklyn, New York, was awarded $5,000 for “Free Fulfillment,” a grant that was sponsored in part by a gift from the Arizona Chapter of AMTA (AMTA-AZ). With this MTF Community Service Grant, Exodus will provide massage therapy services for formerly incarcerated men and women. The goal of the project is to help reeducate these individuals and empower their physical and mental readaptation to touch so they can experience quality of life.

Dale Healey, DC, of Northwestern Health Sciences University (NWHSU) in Bloomington, MN, was awarded $4,800 for “Integrating Massage with La Clinica de la Mariposa.” This grant is sponsored in part by a gift from Biotone. NWHSU has a Clinic in Costa Rica that serve clients with limited income, many of whom are indigent. This grant will provide therapeutic massage to a needy population as well as educate chiropractors and massage therapists about the benefits of integrating their disciplines in the treatment of patients.

Ellisa Lee of SAGE Eldercare’s HomeCare Massage Therapy in Summit, NJ, was awarded $5,000 for “Soothing our Senior Clients.” Since 1954, SAGE Eldercare has been dedicated to the independence, well-being, and quality of life for older adults and their caregivers. This grant will allow SAGE to expand the benefits of its HomeCare home health aide services to include complementary massage therapy for its clients. Providing massage will aim to the anxiety, chronic pain, depression, and insomnia resulting from the many challenges HomeCare clients experience.

Research Grant
For the 2011 Research Grant, the MTF awarded $29,998 to Katharina Wiest, PhD, MSPH, of CODA, Inc. in Portland, OR, for her study “Massage Impact on Chronic Pain in Opioid Dependent Patients. Chronic pain is common among opioid dependant patients beginning substance use treatment. This study will asses the efficacy of Swedish massage techniques on chronic pain in opioid dependent adult patients receiving methadone treatment. Primarily, the researchers will measure the effect of massage on the level of pain intensity. Massage may offer a non-pharmacologic option as part of the treatment arsenal for opioid dependence.

The Massage Therapy Foundation awards Research Grants of up to $30,000, and Community Service Grants of up to $5,000. The deadline to apply for a Research Grant is March 1, 2012, and the Community Service Grant deadline is April 1, 2012. For the full grant synopses, or to apply for a grant, visit www.massagetherapyfoundation.org.

Basics of Research Literacy: The Future is Here

The Future is Here: Are You Ready?

Glenath Moyle, president of the American Massage Therapy Association recently declared in her remarks at the National Convention, “Research is our future, and the future is here!”

I agree with her, but I have a concern.  I would declare, “The future is here–and some of us aren’t ready!”

What about you?

Can you discern a good study from a bad one? What do you do to identify how bias might alter a study’s outcomes? How do you feel about navigating Pubmed Central? And are you confident that you can explain the findings of a typical study to your clients?

Research Literacy is a Job Requirement

Following what happens in massage therapy research is part of every massage therapist’s job, whether he or she is working out of a room at home, in a franchise, at a spa, or in an interdisciplinary health care clinic. The reasons for this are many and varied, but here is a short list:

• Research allows us to build on the experiences of others so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every client.
• Clients are doing their own background reading; we’d better be able to keep up.
• As a new health care system evolves, massage therapy could have an important place–but without good research, we will be shut out of that opportunity.
• It is vital that massage therapists be able to communicate with researchers, so that studies examine massage as it is truly practiced. Otherwise findings may be useless, or worse, misleading. 
• Poorly executed research gets published; we need to be able to identify it and be clear about why we disagree with it.
• Research, along with client values and practitioner skill, is the basis of evidence-informed practice. It is up to us to find research that is relevant and applicable.

But here’s the problem: many schools don’t teach classes in how to access, evaluate and apply new research. Most massage therapists probably wouldn’t claim that they are confident being self-taught in those skills.

So what do we do?

Wouldn’t it be great if…

Wouldn’t it be great if there were an online course that a person could take in his or her own time?  A course that is more than, “read this—take this test”? A course that helps to build skills in identifying good-quality research articles, accessing them, making sense of them, and applying findings to practice?

Basics of Research Literacy (BRL) is a joint project between the Massage Therapy Foundation and Education Training Solutions. Designed by Whitney Lowe and Jan Schwartz, it is a 6-hour continuing education course about—you guessed it—research literacy. It is self-paced, and anything but passive: you will learn what research is, how to do a literature search, and how to evaluate findings. You will hone your online search skills, including the use of relevant data bases so you can find studies that apply to you and your clients. This is an interactive, skill-building course with no time limit for completion.

Basics of Research Literacy is appropriate for anyone: practitioners, students, educators, and others involved in the massage therapy profession.

Basics of Research Literacy is available now, for an introductory price of $75 for individuals, $65 each for groups of five or more. This is a permanent fundraiser for the Massage Therapy Foundation, offered through Education and Training Solutions.

Basics of Research Literacy is your ticket to the future. Be ready. Check it out.

http://www.educationtrainingsolutions.com/massage-therapy-foundation/