Rick Rosen, Executive Director of the Alliance for Massage Therapy Education, was recently selected as one of the Top 10 People in Integrative Medicine / Integrative Health Care by The Integrator Blog. Published and edited by John Weeks, Executive Director of ACCAHC – the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care, the blog is one of the leading sources of news and information about the domain of integrative medicine. The “Top 10 People” list is complied from recommendations submitted by its editorial advisory board of The Integrator Blog.

Rosen was selected for this honor because of the pivotal role he has played in launching and building the Alliance, and for what the organization represents to the field of massage therapy and integrative health care in general. In this annual feature in The Integrator Blog, Weeks wrote:

Rick Rosen, MA, LMBT:
Developing an Organization Dedicated to Advancing Massage Education

Rick Rosen is a North Carolina massage therapist and co-owner of the Body Therapy Institute. For the last 18 months, Rosen has diligently worked to fill an important institutional gap in the massage field; namely, creating an organization dedicated entirely to advancing massage education. Rosen’s Alliance for Massage Therapy Education, which he serves as executive director, aggregated its first members and held its founding conference in June 2010 where a governing board of respected massage educators was elected. In November, the Alliance announced results of a survey of over 300 educators which found strong support for investing in the teaching abilities of massage educators. Subsequently, the Alliance published a white paper through which it kicked off a National Teacher Education Standards Project. Rosen was inducted earlier this year into the Massage Therapy Hall of Fame, perhaps, in the spirit of the 2008 Obama peace prize, out of hope for what will come rather than services already accomplished. Happily, steps the Alliance has taken under Rosen’s direction suggest that he may fare better in his promise to massage educators than Obama has fared in peace-making.