In this episode of "The Rubdown," your host Corey Rivera brings you the latest news and updates from the massage therapy profession spanning from January 1st to April 30th, 2024.
In this episode of "The Rubdown," your host Corey Rivera brings you the latest news and updates from the massage therapy profession spanning from January 1st to April 30th, 2024.
Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area. Check us out at www.healwell.org
Welcome to the rubdown a news update about massage therapy. I'm your host, Corey Rivera, licensed massage therapist and correspondent. Every month, The Rub will bring you news from the world of massage therapy. Today's rubdown will include news from January 1 to April 30 2024. Before we get to the news, I'd like to share with you a resource on the Healwell blog. There are a lot of acronyms, associations and terms that fly around in massage therapy. So we've created a glossary and a list of helpful links. If we've missed any please let us know by emailing us at podcast at heal well.org And now, the news. First up we have Healwell news. The Massage Therapy Foundation has awarded Children's Hospital of Philadelphia a research grant to replicate and expand a study originally conducted by Children's National Hospital and Healwell in 2012. The research is about the effect of massage therapy on sleep and pediatric oncology and stem cell transplant patients. The ability to replicate results is an important step in the research process and one that does not happen often for massage therapy. Healwell is thrilled to be working on this project. In other Healwell news, Healwell Homecoming will be September 20- 21st in Arlington, Virginia. If you're looking for real world real serious topics combined with camaraderie, laughter and an all around good time, this is the event for you. We don't shy away from the hard topics and we don't expect you to go it alone either. Today we're featuring the two classes that will be taught Friday morning for four C's each. And the first option Sakinah Irizarry will be talking about complications and pregnancies. She will discuss the racial discrimination that leads to three times more black women dying of pregnancy complications in the United States. Sakinah will talk about equitable access to care and how you as a massage therapist can help. In the second option, Megan Belanger will be talking about the lymphatic system and teaching to self manual lymphatic drainage techniques. Megan will discuss both lymphedema and lipedima. She'll talk about treatments for each and exciting new information about neurolymphatics and glymphatics. If those words are totally new to you, you should definitely come to this class because when Megan nerds out, everybody wins. Up next, state and national news. The Federal Trade Commission has announced a rule that will place a national ban on non compete agreements. Non compete agreements are usually signed when an employee is hired to prevent the employee from working for competing companies, one in five workers in the United States are currently under non competes. Originally, a non compete was required of highly paid employees in order to protect trade secrets. But they've become so pervasive that retail and food service workers can be required to sign one. The Federal Trade Commission says that non competes prevent workers from seeking better jobs with higher pay, and also stops what is known as "job churn," the process of workers moving up in their fields which makes room for new workers to be hired. Additionally, noncompetes prevent innovation. The state of California's long standing refusal to enforce non competes is credited with the rapid development and innovation of Silicon Valley. Many massage therapists are required to sign on competes. At my first massage therapy job I signed an 18 month non compete with a 20 mile radius that covered every client the business I had worked for had ever seen. The business had been open for 25 years. For those of us in income brackets that are not six figures, noncompetes allow employers to take advantage of their workers lack of options. Also in massage therapy noncompetes prevent continuation of care. We all know how attached clients get to therapists and when a therapist is under a non compete, the client may be unable to follow their therapist leading to delays in treatment and possibly a decrease in treatment effectiveness due to the importance of the therapeutic relationship. The noncompete ban will go into effect in four months. However, less than 24 hours after it was passed the US Chamber of Commerce along with other business groups filed a lawsuit saying that the ban is too wide and that the Federal Trade Commission is overstepping. We will have to wait to see what happens. Here's an update on the news from gainful employment from ABMP. A bill to stop the 150% rule changing to a 100% rule has been introduced in the US House of Representatives. The 100% rule will affect all massage therapy schools. It means that any school that accepts title IV funding, which includes education grants, cannot have a program longer than what is legally required by their state for licensing. Over half of states require only 500 hours for a license and in an impressive twist, title IV funding is not available for programs that are less than 600 hours. This means that massage schools in many states will be prevented from accepting title IV funding full stop. The bill to prevent the 100% rule is sponsored by Pennsylvania representative Lloyd Smucker. All supporters on the bill are Republican and since it's an election year, it is unlikely to go through without bipartisan support. The 100% rule goes into effect July 1, but the Department of Education has realized the burden that this is placing on schools. It has agreed to extend the timeline but only on a case by case basis, and it isn't clear for how long or what schools would qualify. Several states have changed or are planning to change hours required for a license. Louisiana has proposed a bill to move to 625 hours, Tennessee has passed a bill to increase to 650 hours, Florida approved an increase to 650 hours and Nevada has proposed a bill to 625 hours. Next up the interstate compact news from the Federation of State massage therapy boards. The interstate massage therapy compact or impact would increase the portability of massage therapy licensing between states. The Compact is supported by the Council of State Governments and the Department of Defense. The compact currently needs to gain support in seven states in order to continue the process. The compact would allow massage therapist with a license in one state to expedite the process of licensing and another states must opt in to a compact. Currently Nevada has accepted it, and New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Nebraska and Alabama are considering it. Georgia was considering it but it has run into some roadblocks. If you are a Georgia resident and would like to support the compact, please visit the link in the show notes for more information. The American Massage Therapy Association was previously in support of the compact but now opposes it stating, quote, we are concerned with the barriers and restrictions currently in the impact that could impose unnecessary hurdles and exclude many massage therapists from immediately participating in it unquote. These hurdles include the 625 hour requirement, requiring continuing education, requiring therapists to pass an exam and wording that in practice allows only the FSMTB mBLEX exam to qualify as that national exam. In other news, USOLMT and FSMTB worked together to stop the passage of an Arizona House bill that would have dissolved Arizona's massage therapy board and merged it with cosmetology and barbering. This bill was stopped mid March. While we certainly have things in common with those groups, massage therapy is a complicated profession that needs its own board to enable it to make independent decisions. Alaska overturned an executive order that would have dissolved their massage board and put massage therapy under the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. Such a change would indicate that massage therapy in Alaska is considered a commercial matter as opposed to healthcare or service. It would impede legislation designed to promote effective and efficient massage therapy in the state. Our next segment is news from the massage therapy national associations. USOLMT has added five new members to their board of directors and are looking for several more. They need a director of fundraising, marketing education and a secretary treasurer. You can find a board candidate information packet on their website. AFMTE has opened their Educator of the Year Award nominations they will be open until June 1. The Massage Therapy foundation is accepting posters for the AMTA convention in August. Topics are original research, program evaluation and clinical case presentation. The deadline for submissions is May 31. The Massage Therapy foundation is also accepting student and practitioner case reports and schools can apply for the Bob King legacy grant for community based work. Legacy grants are between 500 and 1500 dollars. The deadline for the case reports and the legacy grant applications is June 1. The International Journal of therapeutic massage and bodywork is the academic journal published by the massage therapy Foundation. They publish four times a year and the first volume has been published and is available for you to read free of paywalls. It includes an editorial by the editor in chief Dr. Amanda Baskwill. This is the first of three editorials designed to quote inspire researchers, practitioners and educators to share their work with the IJ TMB community unquote. This editorial focuses on research and discusses some of the challenges of massage therapy research ethical considerations, and suggestions about knowledge translation, which is how research is shared. The second article is by Samantha Zabel PhD candidate about the massage therapy practice based research network or PBRN, an online portal that connects massage therapy clinicians with people researching massage therapy, you can find the PBRN at massage net.org The third article is titled The multi system effects of long COVID syndrome and potential benefits of massage therapy and long COVID care. It is written by Elias Whiebe and others. The article examines 17 reports of long COVID symptoms and compares existing research about the benefits of massage therapy for those specific symptoms. The last article and my favorite is titled What is effective in massage therapy. Well, it depends by Jennifer Stewart Richardson and others. "It depends" is one of Healwell's most common answers to questions so the title made me smile. The article discusses a series of semi structured interviews that asked experienced orthopedic massage therapists what they believe contributes to the effectiveness of massage. My favorite quote is, "by rejecting the use of protocols or checklists in favor of creating individualized treatment plans, participants indicated that they were not only willing but believed it was vital to sit comfortably with uncertainty." And to wrap up this update, here are the massage therapy events coming up. If you want to catch a Healwell live class we have oncology classes June 7 through ninth in Indianapolis, August 23 through 25th in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and October 23 through 25th in Keene New Hampshire. Healwell's hospital based massage therapy stewardship is November 5 through eighth in Washington DC and there are two scar classes remaining for the year with Cathy Ryan. One is September 21, the 22nd in Fairfax, Virginia and the other is October 26 through 27th in Santa Monica, California. And as mentioned before, he will homecoming is September 20 through 21st in Arlington, Virginia. Other live conferences include the AFM te educational conference July 11 through 13th in Kansas City, Missouri, the AMTA national convention September 12 through 14th in Tampa, Florida, the FSMTB annual meeting October 3 through fifth in Washington DC and the Black Massage Therapists conference October 8 through ninth in Charlotte, North Carolina. Tickets for the black massage therapists conference are not yet on sale, but you can sign up on the website to be notified when they are available. If you're looking to stick close to home, the Healwell online community is sponsoring a special event called How to remember what you read on May 19, which will be taught by yours truly. We will also have an online book club on June 27.
We are reading Care:
The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Book clubs happen once in a blue moon so I encourage you to join us in the community at community.healwell.org If you have any national or state level news about massage therapy that you would like to share, please send an email with your news and a link to your source to podcast@healwell.org You can subscribe to our Patreon for early episodes and full interviews and you can always join us in the helo community. This has been your April news rubdown. And thank you for listening
