MRAW, it became clear that the massage therapists regard client education as one of their critical roles and that the researchers did not initially share this view. This is a significant difference, and served to remind the MRAW that it would be of benefit to both the profession and the public to gather information about how massage therapists view their role and whether there is systematic variation in this by region, degree of training, years in practice, etc. It would also be of value to gather information on how the 10 profession is perceived by the public, including clients, potential clients, referring health professionals, and health professionals in general. How do these groups view the work/role of massage therapists, and assess the effectiveness of massage therapists? How do all these groups view the role of clients? Are they thought of as passive recipients of a service or therapy? Do clients expect to learn from their massage therapists? Evaluating Assessment Skills of Massage Therapists Diagnosis falls outside the scope of practice of massage therapy. At the same time, massage therapists assess and reassess what is happening with clients in order to make decisions about treatment design. In part, because of the legal situation, our assessment has not been well studied, but it needs to be. In particular, it is important to study what is taught about assessment in comparison with what is practiced. Comparisons of this across regions with differing legal situations would be useful. In addition, it is vital to know whether there is inter-rater reliability in the area of assessment. That is, would different massage therapists, asked to assess the same clients, draw the same or different conclusions as to what is happening? Would they then design identical, similar, or widely varying treatment plans? Dimensions Of The Therapeutic Encounter Finally, it was recognized that little investigation has been done on the therapeutic encounter itself within massage treatment. This is an important and potentially delicate area of inquiry, particularly within a climate in which much of what massage therapists may value as good practitioner/client interaction is seen, in another framework, as contamination or placebo effect. Nonetheless, or perhaps because of this, it is important to create ways of investigating the effects of everything from practitioner influence (both purposeful and accidental), to the influence of such environmental factors as music, lighting and so forth. What is the role of the practitioner/client relationship? How important is this attunement and how can one measure it? What therapist characteristics make a difference? How do you measure entrainment, e.g. EEG entrainment between client and therapist or pulse entrainment? Finally, assuming there is some “practitioner effect,” it would be of value to determine ways of identifying characteristics that help match clients and therapists. 11 CONCLUSION The field of research in therapeutic massage and bodywork is just beginning to develop. This is an important step for a health care modality that is used widely but lacks extensive, rigorous data on its safety and efficacy. Many forms of research will be beneficial during this early, formative phase in the professionalization of massage in modern contexts. It is hoped that between federal and private funding sources, significant aspects of the work suggested here will be accomplished in the near future. Chronic musculoskeletal pain is associated with significant social and economic costs (Blyth et al., 2019, Shupler et al., 2019). What’s more is that conventional treatment options such opioid-based analgesics, corticosteroid injections, and surgical interventions are associated with small improvements versus placebo for pain and function and an increased risk of harm (Busse et al., 2017, Chou et al., 2020). This has prompted stakeholders to re-evaluate how treatment is provided for people living with chronic musculoskeletal pain (Lewis et al., 2020; Lin et al., 2020). Musculoskeletal pain is a complex and multifactorial phenomenon and treatment requires an individualized multidisciplinary approach that addresses biopsychosocial influences and empowers people with shared decisionmaking. Increasingly evidence-based non-pharmacological treatments options are being integrated with standard care as part of a person-centered approach (Lin et al., 2020; Manchikanti et al., 2020). The paradigm shift to an evidence-based multidisciplinary approach presents an opportunity for massage therapists to collaborate with other healthcare professionals to improve a patient’s health and treatment outcome. With respect to the multidisciplinary treatment of pain, massage therapy has a desirable safety profile and it is a health care option that has been shown to be effective for many persistent pain syndromes (Skelly et al., 2020). What is often not appreciated is that a number of clinical practice guidelines and systematic reviews support the use of massage therapy for patients suffering from a whole host of conditions including but not limited to back pain, tension-type headaches, temporomandibular joint disorder, carpal tunnel syndrome, and plantar heel pain. Specific examples would be the endorsement from the American College of Physicians who now recognizes massage therapy as a treatment option for patients with acute and chronic low back