The International Chiropractic Association has created a fact sheet for people interested in learning more about Chiropractors and their training. Click on the link below to learn how well educated and trained Chiropractors are.
A man who once carried the ball for 197 touchdowns is the now carrying the ball for the chiropractic profession.
The legendary Jerry Rice, one of the National Football League’s (NFL) greatest players and wide receivers, has been enlisted by the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress to speak out on his use and support of chiropractors.
An advertising campaign featuring Jerry Rice kicked off in the December 15th issue of ESPN The Magazine, with a national circulation of over 2 million. The full-page ad included supportive statements on how chiropractic made a difference in making him one of the most feared wide receivers in the history of football, and later as a finalist with the popular Dancing with the Stars competition reality program.
“This ad is the beginning of a comprehensive public relations effort that is planned in the next couple of months to communicate Rice’s endorsement of our profession and will include placement in Sports Illustrated, USA Today, Men’s Fitness and Women’s Health,” said Laura Carabello, principal in CPR Communications, the company that handles all media and public relations for the Foundation.
“Our campaign also includes press releases, a video of Jerry Rice discussing his experience with chiropractors, which will be sent to various media throughout the country, an advertorial that will be sent to 10,000 newspapers in the country, and various Public Service Announcements for radio,” Carabello added.
“My first experience with chiropractic care was right before the 49ers were to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII in 1987,” said Rice in the promotional video. “A couple of our key players were injured and a chiropractor turned things around. I quickly became a believer and ever since, I have had the benefit of chiropractic care.”
Rice, who attended Mississippi Valley State University, was an outstanding college wide receiver. In 1984, his senior year, he scored five touchdowns in two games and was named to every All-American football team in the country. His college career total of 50 touchdowns stood as an NCAA record until 2006.
Although he was a first round draft by the San Francisco 49ers in 1985, NFL scouts were somewhat concerned because he was not considered very fast to be a professional wide receiver (reportedly he only ran the 40-yard dash in 4.70 seconds — most wide receivers run 40 yards in at least 4.5 seconds).
His rookie year he recorded 49 catches for 927 yards, averaging nearly 19 yards per catch and was named the National Football Conference Offensive Rookie of the Year. In 1987, he was named the NFL’s Player of the Year. Twenty years later, he retired from professional football holding nearly every wide receiver record in the NFL.
“Football is a very rough and vigorous sport,” said Rice in the video. “Many of the pass patterns in a game — either long or short — required a maximum effort. I took some vicious hits from players nearly twice my size. [Rice is 6’2” and his playing weight was 200 pounds] Thankfully, I had the durability to withstand these tackles — or I would never have succeeded or lasted as long as I did. Chiropractic was the key to keeping me in the game.”
Although his football career is over, his use of chiropractic treatment continues —most recently helping him when he was a finalist on Dancing with the Stars.
“Dancing with the Stars was every bit as exhausting and challenging — though not nearly as brutal as football,” said Rice in the video. “It required many hours of practice. I had aches and pains that I never had before. Again, chiropractic made the difference — and kept me dancing and in competition.”
The Foundation was founded in November 2003 as a nonprofit corporation. Kent S. Greenawalt, president and CEO of Foot Levelers Inc., spearheaded the founding of the Foundation and is its current chairman.
“To bring all factions of our industry today — from the schools, to the students, to the DCs, to the vendors supporting the chiropractic industry — we developed and have maintained a mission statement that all of us can and should support,” said Greenawalt. “Our mission is to increase the number of people who seek chiropractic treatment on a regular basis.”
In 2005, Foot Levelers and NCMIC Group committed to contribute $1 million each over a five-year period to the Foundation. Standard Process has committed more than $250,000 to the Foundation.
“Major contributions have permitted us to continue an effective and high-profile advertising campaign,” said Gary Cuneo, chief operation officer of the Foundation. “But to really achieve our purpose of increasing chiropractic care in the country, we need the entire chiropractic community’s support and especially support from individual DCs because they are truly the reason for our existence.”
Since July 2006, the Foundation has placed full-page advertisements in national publications featuring patients and medical doctors providing positive testimony regarding chiropractic. National publications carrying the advertisements include: Sports Illustrated, U.S. News & World Report, New York Times Magazine, TV Guide, Newsweek, Martha Stewart Living, Working Mothers, Health, Business Insurance, and Business Week.
“Singing Jerry Rice as a spokesperson, however, takes us to a whole other level of public awareness,” said Greenawalt. “We have Joseph Doyle to thank for this. It was his idea and he went and made the initial contact with Mr. Rice’s agent.” Joseph Doyle is publisher of Chiropractic Economics Magazine and is a director of the Foundation.
Oklahoma patients overwhelmingly declare that they are satisfied with their chiropractic care, according to a survey taken by the Oklahoma State Chiropractic Independent Physician Association (OSCIPA), a non-profit physician association with 175 chiropractors.
The survey was conducted among a random sample of 750 patients, selected from 36, 710 patients seen by OSCIPA members in 2004.
The study also found that word-of-mouth communication is a cost-effective way to build a chiropractic practice. Findings included:
Chiropractic is one of the “great jobs” according to a ranking by the business magazine Fast Company. The magazine ranked chiropractic fourth in its list of Top 25 jobs in America.
The magazine used four criteria to identify the best jobs: job growth, salary potential, education level, and room for innovation. It relied “heavily” on data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and Salary.com.
Spinal manipulation, in the form of chiropractic, osteopathy, or manipulative physiotherapy, followed by a program of exercise, provides significant relief of symptoms and improvements in general health, according to a trial by the Medical Research Council (MRC). The results of the trial were published November 19, 2006 in the Online edition of the British Medical Journal.
According to the MRC, which is a national research organization funded by the British Parliament, lower back pain is one of the most common ailments general practitioners have to treat.
The MRC trial recruited more than 1,300 patients from across the UK, whose back pain had not improved after receiving “best care” in general practice, to assess the effectiveness of three different treatments. The treatments were:
The results showed that patients in all treatment groups reported improved back function and reduced pain over time, but to varying degrees. On average, patients assigned to exercise classes in addition to care by a general practitioner (GP) reported a small benefit at three months but not at one year.
Those assigned to spinal manipulation in addition to GP care reported a small to moderate benefit at three months and a small, on average, benefit at one year.
The greatest improvement was found in the patients assigned to combined manipulation and exercise in addition to GP care. They reported a moderate, on average, improvement at three months and a small average improvement at one year. These benefits were the same whether treatment was delivered using private or National Health Service (NHS) premises.
An economic analysis was also carried out. It showed that the cost to the NHS of all three treatments was modest. It also showed that both spinal manipulation and the combined package of spinal manipulation and exercise achieved similar benefits to patients at a similar cost to the NHS.
According to the American Chiropractic Association, the MRC study is one of a number of recent studies regarding chiropractic’s effectiveness for back pain over traditional medical care.
A March 2004 study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics found that chiropractic care is more effective than medical care at treating chronic low-back pain in patients’ first year of symptoms. And a study published in the July 13, 2003 edition of the medical journal Spine found that manual manipulation provides better short-term relief of chronic spinal pain than does a variety of medications.
