Thank you to our massage therapy community for your support! AMTA is excited to share that Congress passed the NOPAIN Act in late December. The NOPAIN Act is a huge win for our massage therapy community, which aims to make a significant impact in helping prevent opioid addiction and saving lives throughout the country. The passage of the Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation Act (NOPAIN Act) is intended to increase patient and provider access to non-opioid approaches to pain management for those enrolled in Medicare and help stem the opioid epidemic across the nation. Supporting this leg ..read more

2022 AMTA National Election Results Are In! AMTA is happy to announce that 95.2% of professional members voting in the AMTA National Board Election approved the slate of new board directors to take office on March 1, 2023. The elected board members will be Heber Blackner, Cindy Farrar, Bob Jantsch, Kim Kane-Santos, Cheryl Siniakin and LaDonna Ward. They will join four continuing Board Directors – Jaime Bernardo, Jr., Rick Greely, Jane Horton Johnson and Lee Stang. On March 1, 2023, Christine Bailor-Goodlander will become the AMTA President and current President, Michaele Colizza, will continue ..read more

AMTA has achieved an exciting milestone. We are now a community of 100,000 members strong! This is the largest membership in AMTA’s history. What began as a small group of 29 like-minded, dedicated massage therapists in 1943, has transformed into the leading non-profit association for the profession. We are a welcoming and diverse group of people coming together for a unified purpose – to elevate our profession and to help people lead better lives through the power of massage therapy. AMTA is focused on giving back to our members and the massage community. This is our mission, and we take ..read more

In a time when the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) ranks anxiety as the country’s most common mental illness – and depression as the leading cause of disability for people ages 15 to 441, people with mental health issues are turning to a range of wellness strategies, including massage therapy which has a positive impact on the body and mind. Explore recent research that supports the benefits of massage therapy for stress, anxiety and depression. Studies on Massage for Stress and Anxiety A recent study by German researchers indicated that short-term interventions such as ma ..read more

This bill and draft report include language and funding to support several areas of interest to the massage therapy profession.  On July 29, the House of Representatives approved the FY 2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (“Labor HHS”) funding bill with a vote of 219-208. The bill passed as part of a larger package of 7 of the annual 12 appropriations bills to fund the federal government for the fiscal year starting October 1.  The Labor HHS bill is one of the annual funding bills that Congress must pass each fiscal year in order to keep the fed ..read more

Legislation addressing comprehensive approaches to pain care introduced in Congress.  AMTA is pleased to announce that a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators recently introduced S. 987, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA 3.0) to increase funding authorization levels for certain programs passed as part of the CARA bill in 2016, and to build upon earlier efforts to help address the rising opioid epidemic through enhanced access to treatment and prevention. CARA 3.0 is a comprehensive approach to tackling issues related to chronic and acute pain and substance abuse. AMTA has lon ..read more

The Non-Opioids Prevent Addiction in the Nation (“NOPAIN”) Act, H.R.3259/S. 586, first introduced in the 116th Congress, was reintroduced by a bipartisan group of U.S. Representatives and Senators this year.  Representatives Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Kuster (D-NH), Sewell (D-AL) and McKinley (R-WV) are the lead sponsors in the House, and Senators Capito (R-WVA), Manchin (D-WV), Portman (R-OH) and Shaheen (D-NH) are the Senate lead sponsors. The NOPAIN Act aims to increase patient and provider access to non-opioid approaches to acute pain management and is part of AMTA's ongoing advocacy efforts ..read more