House of Delegates Report

House of Delegates Report
by Linda Bucher

This year was the last year for the HOD.

The House of Delegates has been undergoing a restructuring for the last couple of years. This year was the last year it will be called the House of Delegates, starting next year it be known as the Assembly of Delegates (AOD). What this means is the number of delegates will be less and how position statements and recommendations will be presented will change.

Positions statement ideas will be brought before the AOD which will then be decided by the AOD that would like to see sent to the National Board to look at and then they would create a work group who will oversee doing the research and putting together a position statement that will be presented to the AOD.
I really like this because the approved position statement will not just be placed on the National AMTA website and forgotten. The position statements are written in a format that can be published in medical journals. I am looking forward to continuing to be involved with the AOD as it changes and grows.

About this year’s position statement which was “Massage Therapy Can Provide Significant Benefit as a Component of Integrative Health Care”. There were over 116 articles presented in support of the position statement but only 50 of those articles were based on research and pilot studies. A lot of those were not done by a massage therapist but were performed by PT, PTA and Chiropractor. So, for these reasons I was not in support of this position statement. I would have liked to see it rewritten with more research.

This position statement did pass by 119 that were in favor and only 18 against and I was one of the 18 against. Both Pro and Con debates were good and both had valid points.

We had only one recommendation this year which was presented by the Indiana Chapter. Their recommendation is “Chapter Allowance of Dues received from National for Student Membership Classification”. I was against this recommendation. Reason is I feel asking National to pay $10.00 per student to the chapters is counterproductive. How can National give to the chapters that they have not received?

I feel the main reason it passed was because at the opening session National stated that they have 23.5 million in reserve. So, a lot of the delegates were stating that if National has this much in reserve then they could afford to give the chapters the funds, especially the smaller chapters that are struggling. This recommendation passed with 83 for and 54 against.

Click here for the House of Delegates minutes.