Dr. Hans Kraus treated President John F. Kennedy’s back pain with therapeutic exercise in 1961. His work informed Dr. Norman Marcus’s approach to muscle pain and, later, FRAME’s commitment to research and physician education.
Dr. Hans Kraus examined President John F. Kennedy in 1961 after years of persistent back pain. He identified weakness and stiffness in postural muscles and developed an exercise program to address them.
Historical accounts describe improvement with Kraus’s program and Kennedy’s plans for a national back pain institute based on this approach. The institute was never established after Kennedy’s death.
Kraus’s clinical work helped establish a rationale for examining muscles as a source of back pain. FRAME builds on that work by supporting further research into diagnosis and treatment, alongside physician education.
Dr. Marcus is a board-certified pain medicine specialist and Clinical Associate Professor of Pain Medicine in Anesthesiology and Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. He co-founded Montefiore Hospital’s Pain Treatment Center in 1977 and later directed pain programs at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York and Princess Margaret Hospital in Windsor, UK.
From 1991 to 1996, he studied muscle pain evaluation and treatment with Dr. Hans Kraus. His subsequent clinical work and published research have examined muscle as a source of persistent pain and the outcomes of muscle-focused treatment. He co-founded FRAME to expand research and physician education in the examination and treatment of soft tissue pain.
Dr. Hayes’s experience of chronic pain led him to Dr. Marcus and helped shape their shared interest in improving the recognition and treatment of muscle pain.
Together, they founded FRAME to support research and expand physician education in soft tissue pain. His perspective as someone who had sought treatment helped ground that mission in the needs of people living with chronic pain.
FRAME aspires to create a new discipline in medicine that recognizes the importance of soft tissue in common pain problems. To that end, the foundation supports research, education, and advocacy. In 2024, FRAME supported a symposium at Weill Cornell Medicine on muscle pain and spine-related conditions, bringing together clinicians across disciplines to advance the field.
FRAME's board is composed entirely of volunteers, many of whom have been personally impacted by soft tissue pain.
Hansen-MacDonald Professor of Neurological Surgery and Director of Spinal Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. Co-directed the 2024 symposium on muscle and spine pain with Dr. Norman Marcus and Dr. Neel Mehta.
Your support helps fund research and physician education so that muscle pain receives greater attention in clinical care.