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Students/Faculty News Kevin Storr February 04, 2025

William Reed poses with his researcher of they year award.William Reed, DC, Ph.D., professor and director of the UAB PhD in Rehabilitation Science program, received the George B. McClelland Researcher of the Year Award from the American Chiropractic Association. The annual award recognizes individuals for developing, refining and/or expanding the body of knowledge in chiropractic.

“This award is both an honor and a privilege as it brings recognition to my research efforts over the last 20 years to advance our knowledge and mechanistic understanding of chiropractic and manual therapy approaches to healthcare,” said Reed. “Reviewing the list of past awardees of the ACA Researcher of the Year award places me in the company of distinguished friends and colleagues, many of whom I have had the distinct pleasure of working with and being co-authors on many peer-reviewed research articles.”

Reed is principal investigator for an NIH-funded Force-Based Manipulations Research Network (ForceNET) – one of three U24 network awardees. This is a multidisciplinary effort to advance understanding of physiological mechanisms underlying Force-Based Manipulations, and how applied forces such as those used in spinal manipulation can be optimized for better patient outcomes.

Currently, ForceNET has more than 450 registered members from more than 100 distinct institutions and affiliations around the world. The initiative has funded three pilot grant investigating mechanisms of Force-based Manipulations equating to $175,000, and they anticipate onfunding another three pilot grant awards in 2025 for an additional $225,000.

“This is an exciting time for field of manual therapy with ever-increasing public interest and use of these non-pharmacological Force-Based Manipuluation approaches to improving one’s overall health and well-being,” said Reed, who is also serving his second year as co-chair of the NIH Force-Based Manipulation U24 Steering Committee.

ForceNET has published over 15 peer-reviewed articles in the last three years, with 10 of these articles forming a special issue in the Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy (JMMT) in February 2024. This month, ForceNET – in combination with the other two Force-Based Manipulations U24s (SpineWork and Neurons_MattR) – will host a virtual Force-Based Manipulation scientific symposium, CONVERGE 2025, having four virtual tracks (clinical, imaging, modeling, and neuroscience) with leaders in the field.


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