1958 — The Chiropractic Research Foundation, organized under the auspices of the National Chiropractic Association (NCA) as a non-profit philanthropic agency in 1944, was re-organized as the Foundation for Accredited Chiropractic Education (FACE) in 1958. Its primary purpose was to assist the struggling chiropractic schools to upgrade sufficiently to achieve federal recognition through the U.S. Office of Education.

That quest would require another 16 years to come to fruition, aided largely by the American Chiropractic Association (ACA; successor to the NCA), which contributed 40 percent of membership dues to FACE for this purpose.

However, research was not overlooked. In 1959 FACE appointed Henry G. Higley, DC, MS, chair of the physiology department at the LACC, to chair its Research Advisory Committee and funded him to commence investigations of spinal disorders.

Dr. Henry Higley

Dr. Higley’s landmark study, The Intervertebral Disc Syndrome, was published by the NCA in January 1960 and received inter-disciplinary and international attention for its thoroughness and meticulous attention to detail. This monograph may have been the first chiropractic literature to be indexed by the National Library of Medicine in its Index Medicus. Dr. Higley was named FACE’s director of research, and supervised projects at various chiropractic colleges. An unsung pioneer of chiropractic science, Dr. Higley died in 1969 at the relatively young age of 66.