Who writes this, and who pays for it.

Back Pain Bulletin is a single-subject publication for working people in the St. Louis metro who got hurt in a car wreck and still have to show up tomorrow. It covers one thing, it is paid for by one clinic, and it says so on every page. This is the fine print, written to be read rather than skipped.

Who this desk is

An editorial desk, not a clinic. The name is a description of the format: a bulletin board in a break room, where the important notices get pinned where people will actually see them. The voice is the one you would use to a coworker who got rear-ended on Thursday and is trying to decide whether to deal with it. Plain, short, no hype, no exclamation points.

The desk is anchored in South County because that is where most of its readers work and drive. It covers the whole metro and the three Missouri Injury Clinic rooms in Hazelwood, on Tesson Ferry, and in O'Fallon.

What it covers

Back and neck pain after a car crash, with a side of the concussion that often rides along with it. The first week, the second morning, the low-speed rear-end hit, working a physical job with a strained back, what a first exam is, what the dated record is and is not, and where the rooms are. That is the range. This desk does not cover chronic back conditions unrelated to a crash, surgery, medication, or anything outside the clinic's published lanes.

The advertising relationship, stated plainly

This page is advertising. This desk is compensated for featuring Missouri Injury Clinic, and it is not the clinic, not a law office, and not a party to anyone's insurance claim. We publish only the lanes, rooms, and hours the clinic publishes on moinjuryclinic.com. We do not write reviews, rank providers, or give medical or legal advice.

In practice that means three things. Every call to action on this site goes to Missouri Injury Clinic or to one of its three published phone numbers. The desk does not compare the clinic to other providers, and it does not claim the clinic is better than anyone. And the desk does not publish anything about the clinic that the clinic does not publish itself: no services, hours, staff, prices, or outcomes beyond what is on moinjuryclinic.com. The only reviews that appear here are the three the clinic publishes on its own homepage, attributed as published.

Where the facts come from

Two places. Facts about the clinic come from the clinic, specifically from what it publishes on moinjuryclinic.com: the three lanes, the three rooms with their addresses, phones, and hours, the name of the chiropractor who runs it, and the three reviews. If it is not published there, it is not published here.

Medical background comes from public sources a reader can check: the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke on whiplash and back pain, the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases on back pain, the CDC's HEADS UP program on concussion, and the NHTSA on seat belts. When a page states a medical fact a reader might doubt, it cites one of those. When it cannot, it does not state the fact.

The desk publishes no statistics of its own. Where it describes what a crash does to a body, it describes the general mechanism that the sources above describe, and it says so.

What this desk will not do

It will not diagnose. It will not give medical advice or legal advice. It will not tell anyone what to do about an insurance claim, and it will not suggest that getting examined is about anything other than getting examined. Joseph L. Hollingsworth, DC, is a chiropractor, and this desk will never describe him or his clinic as anything else. The desk does not hold anyone's records, arrange anyone's payment, or speak to insurers for anyone.

It also will not pretend a clinic is an emergency room. Chest pain, a sudden severe headache, weakness or numbness on one side, trouble speaking, a loss of bowel or bladder control, or a head injury with vomiting or worsening confusion is an emergency room trip right now, not a call to a clinic. That line appears on every page because it is the one thing this desk most needs a reader to get right.

Photographs

The photographs on this site are editorial illustrations of the world the desk writes about: break rooms, loading docks, exam rooms, parking lots before dawn, a crumpled bumper on a wet shoulder. They are not photographs of the clinic, its staff, or its patients, and none of them depict an injury. The one real landmark photograph, the view of downtown from Interstate 55, is from Wikimedia Commons and carries its photographer's credit in the caption.

Corrections

If something on this bulletin is wrong, a wrong hour, a wrong address, a medical statement that does not hold up, the desk wants to know. Write to the desk through the clinic's contact page on moinjuryclinic.com and say it is for Back Pain Bulletin. Corrections are made on the page, and the page's date is updated.