MTF Celebrates 30 Years!
Posted:Tuesday, March 10, 2020
By Doug Nelson, LMT, BCTMB, Massage Therapy Foundation President
On August 3, 2020, the Massage Therapy Foundation will turn 30 years old! An important milestone anniversary like this is the perfect time for us to look back and reflect on past achievements, plan for a bright future, and celebrate where we are in the present moment. We look forward to a year full of opportunities to do all three!
MTF’s thirty years of serving the massage therapy profession have been filled with many major accomplishments in which we can all take pride:
- Over 1.25-million in MTF Research Grants investigating the benefits of massage;
- Over 10,000 people served by 82 MTF Community Service Grant-funded projects;
- Over 56,000 downloads of our educational Research Perch podcast episodes;
- 47 issues published of our peer-reviewed, open-access scientific journal, the International Journal of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (IJTMB).
We carry the momentum of these and so many other less-quantifiable achievements into the present, where we are doing more than ever before to serve the vision and mission set forth at our founding. I am often struck by the variety and number of initiatives we are undertaking and the commitment of so many people to make all this happen. We have seven research studies running concurrently; the most in our history. In the last several years we have amped up our efforts to raise the bar on research literacy through new podcast episodes, eBooks, infographics, and other programs to reach an ever-expanding audience of therapists, students, and educators.
As we savor these present accomplishments we’re also excited to envision MTF’s future. As a part of looking forward, we are announcing a major initiative this anniversary year; Thirty Goals for Thirty Years. Over the coming weeks and months, we will unveil 30 ambitious goals that we will accomplish by the end of February 2021. Some of these goals are internal while some invite your participation—be on the lookout for ways you can help push the profession forward!
The Massage Therapy Foundation plays a unique and important role the in the ecosystem of massage therapy organizations. The MT profession has blossomed tremendously over thirty years, becoming an established modality that health care and wellness practitioners can recommend with confidence. The Foundation’s efforts to bolster the scientific underpinnings of the work and put this research into therapist’s hands have played an instrumental role in providing a root system to support that growth. Scientific research and education initiatives take time and are not always dramatic, but they are critical to making strides in our profession for generations to come.
We deeply appreciate your support as we endeavor to advance the field of massage therapy for the next thirty years and beyond.
