The mission of the Foundation for the Research and Advocacy for Muscle Pain Education (FRAME) is to facilitate groundbreaking research on muscle pain and educate the medical community on the importance of muscles in the assessment and treatment of pain.
FRAME is the first nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding the role of muscles and other soft tissue in acute and chronic pain. Hans Kraus, MD was a pioneer in understanding and treating muscle pain until his death in 1996.
His legacy, in addition to being considered the father of sports medicine and an internationally renowned rock climber, includes being the catalyst in the creation of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Exercise during the Eisenhower administration after publishing his study finding that American schoolchildren demonstrated less strength and flexibility than their Austrian and Italian counterparts.
We are proud to present the first award to Roger Härtl MD
Dr. Kraus successfully treated President John F. Kennedy’s back pain, incorporating treatments addressing multiple sources of muscle pain. After years of suboptimal treatments, JFK planned to establish a “National Foundation for Physical Fitness” to institutionalize Hans’s approach to combat the progressive rise in the incidence of disabling back pain.
FRAME recognizes the spirit of JFK’s wish to expand organized medicine’s understanding and treatment of back and other common pain problems and establishes the Hans Kraus Award for Muscle Pain Education. We are proud to present the award to Roger Härtl MD, the Hansen-MacDonald Professor of Neurological Surgery and Director of Neurosurgery Spine at the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center in New York.
He is also the founder and director of the Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Comprehensive Spine Care as well as Weill Cornell Medicine’s Global Neurosurgery Initiative in Tanzania (for which he was named AANS Humanitarian of the Year for 2022). He serves as the official neurosurgeon for the New York Giants Football Team.
Congratulations
Dr. Härtl, who like Dr. Kraus is also a rock climber, has championed the inclusion of soft tissue into the evaluation and treatment protocols at the Weill Cornell Center for Comprehensive Spine Care. Unique amongst surgeons, he has published a chapter and paper on the role of soft issue in back pain before and following otherwise successful spine surgery.
Congratulations to Dr. Hartl for winning the 2023 Hans Kraus Award. Below please find a response from Dr. Hartl.
Dr Roger Hartl ResponseDr Ann Kraus Response
Award Presentation
The Hans Kraus Award was presented to Dr. Härtl by the President and Co-Founder of FRAME, Dr. Norman Marcus on July 19, 2023 at the Cornell Griffis Faculty Club, with his colleagues and friends present.
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