The Public Health Service of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded Los Angeles College of Chiropractic (LACC) a grant of nearly $900,000 dollars over three years to demonstrate the effectiveness of chiropractic care in the management of mechanical low back pain. This award will be the largest made by the federal government for chiropractic research. This will also be the first federal grant made to LACC for studying the management of low back pain in a chiropractic research setting.
Total direct costs for the three-year project are $875,176. There have been additional donations of $25,000 from the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research and $27,000 worth of equipment from Leander Health Technologies.
The study, in collaboration with the University of California, Irvine's College of Medicine Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) has four goals:
Members of the research study team from U.C. Irvine's College of Medicine Dept. of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation include: Jerome Tobis (professor emeritus, chairman of the study team); John Hong (associate professor); Calvin Okey (resident); Nathan Wong (assistant professor, director of preventive cardiology); Art Rubel (professor, depart. of family medicine); Paul Feldstein (professor, graduate school of management); and Fred Hoehler, statistical consultant on the project.
LACC President Dr. Reed Phillips said the study's findings would have "important consequences to both professions," as the study will make available to patients the therapies of MDs and DCs at both sites (LACC and UCI). Dr. Phillips said the study's findings "could lend a new understanding of the effects of interprofessional treatments."
The project began November 1, 1994. For the first year (phase I) of the project, four licensed DCs with a minimum of one year experience are needed to give manual trigger point examination and motion palpation of the lumbar spine on 104 patients. This will take approximately half a day every other week for one year to complete. DCs interested in participating in the study may contact the research division at LACC at (310) 947-8755 ext. 370.
When I graduated from chiropractic college in 1981 and started practice, I heard it all, and very little was positive. “You are a quack; you do not know what a subluxation is; you couldn’t get into a real health care program, so you chose the one that is slightly above a mail-order degree; you have no proof that chiropractic works; Are you really licensed?”, and so much more.
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