Jeff Langmaid argues that neck and back pain remain leading causes of global disability despite massive research on exercise, imaging, surgery, and medications. A recent survey of researchers, clinicians, patients, and policymakers found misalignment between what gets studied and what actually reduces disability worldwide.
And as you know, there is no shortage of research. Every single month, there are new papers on exercise, imaging, biomechanics, pain mechanisms, manual therapy, injections, surgery, medications, diagnostic testing. We cover a lot of that every single week on this podcast, but there's a lot. And there's back and neck pain. They continue to sit at the top of the list when we talk about disability around the world. So it's really that we— maybe we don't need more research. Maybe we need to ask the question, are we pointing enough of that research in the right direction. And that's what this study was about. They zoomed way out and they looked at the research community itself and said, what have researchers, clinicians, patients, policymakers, all the above— what have they said should be the priorities for future research in neck pain, back pain, and osteoarthritis? And then they asked a bigger question: do these priorities actually match what we need if we want to reduce the global burden of musculoskeletal conditions?
