Focused Issue on Low Back Pain Clinical Research From Early Career Researchers: Delivering the Best Work From the Brightest Minds in Musculoskeletal Research to Help Clinicians Help Patients

The July 2022 focused issue of the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy is dedicated to clinical research on low back pain (LBP), a societal and economic health problem that is often underfunded. In this issue, the contribution of early career researchers is substantial and, as a testament, each article has an early career researcher as first and last author. The issue includes 2 literature reviews, 3 research reports, 2 clinical commentaries and 1 viewpoint, addressing timely topics in the field of LBP including the diversity of the LBP population under study, in terms of age, setting, and socioeconomic status. Moreover, methodological topics such as clinimetrics, causal mediation analysis, and evidence synthesis (systematic and narrative) are central to the issue.