ABMP Marks 20 Years
Updated: 10-26-07

The Associated Bodywork & Massage Professionals (ABMP) announced Oct. 23 that its membership had reached 61,000. The announcement was part of ABMP's celebration of its 20th anniversary.

Also in conjunction with its anniversary, ABMP donated $20,000: $10,000 to the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB) and $10,000 to the Massage Therapy Foundation.

The FSMTB is developing an entry-level exam for the massage field (http://www.massagemag.com/News/2007/March/LicensingExam.php).

"The FSMTB recently launched its Massage and Bodywork Licensing Exam (MBLEx) after a swift but thorough effort to create a nationally verified entry-level assessment instrument for the profession," said Les Sweeney, ABMP's president, in a press release. "Now it's time to take the story of that development effort to state massage-therapy boards to persuade them to champion the exam as a clearly focused licensing examination for the profession," he said.

The Massage Therapy Foundation is an organization that supports massage research and community-outreach programs (www.massagemag.com/News/2007/October/MT-Foundation-Appoints-Advisory-Council.php). The donation to the foundation (www.massagemag.com/Magazine/donate.php) is designated for the Student Case Report Contest, a program founded in 2005 for massage-therapy students to conduct case studies and summarize them in clinical case reports, the press release noted.

—Karen Menehan, MASSAGE Magazine Editor in Chief