About Us

About The Back School

How The Back School Began

The Back School of Atlanta was founded by Stanley V. Paris, PH.D., P.T. and Ronald W. Porter, P.T., CEAS in 1980 as an outreach of the Atlanta Back Clinic. The business name was changed to "The Back School" in 2012 and is still located in Atlanta, Georgia with Ron Porter as its Director.

Both licensed Physical Therapists, the founders initially formed The Back School to treat workers' comp patients suffering from numerous musculoskeletal disorders. The Back School evolved into an ergonomics-focused company centered on back injury prevention in the '80s (even before OSHA's guidelines were developed) and over the past 35+ years has become renowned for conveying ergonomics expertise through online training courses, live workshops and onsite consulting engagements.

Onsite Consulting

The consulting branch of The Back School was developed in the 80's when a nurse employed by an automotive paint manufacturer, asked The Back School to perform onsite ergonomics injury prevention training for their plant. That consulting engagement yielded a 7% decrease in workers' comp costs for the client.

As other client companies became invested in injury prevention, a slide program and two 16mm training movies were produced at that time: "It's Your Back" and "How to Start a Back School" to assist in training safety and health professionals at a corporate level.

Today, The Back School performs multiple proprietary consulting engagements each year, as well as conducting trademarked Power Zone and Workplace Athlete® training programs for clients in industrial, healthcare, dental and office environments.

Live Workshops & Online Courses

When ergonomics became mainstream and organizations began expressing interest in using ergonomics (products and practices) to assess and prevent risk factors in the work environment, it became evident that there was a need for individuals across many occupations and industries to be trained to perform ergonomics assessments and evaluations.

In 2000, The Back School developed live workshops held in locations across the United States to train Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists (and many other healthcare professionals), Risk Management, Safety and Human Resources Professionals, Athletic Trainers and other Wellness professionals. This training allowed a staff member or team to become certified and conduct their own risk analyses and assessments for their company without the need to bring in a consultant. For healthcare professionals such as Physical and Occupational Therapists, this allowed them to expand their expertise and branch into ergonomics as a specialty.

The CEAS™ Certification was approved and The Back School began granting individuals who passed the course the title of Certified Ergonomics Assessment Specialist™. Today, there are three levels of certification: CEAS, CEAS II (Expanded Ergonomics Assessment Skills) and CEAS III (Practice and Management of Occupational Ergonomics), as well as AOEAS® (Advanced Office Ergonomics Assessment Specialist).

In 2005, courses and certifications geared specifically toward the industrial sector were added to target Physical Demands Analysis, Functional Capacity Evaluations (CFCE) and Essential Functions Evaluations (CEFE). 

In 2012, in order to make their ergonomics courses and certifications available to all individuals worldwide, The Back School expanded its training to include online courses and certifications.

Since 2000, The Back School has certified over 10,000 individuals via their live workshops and online courses, and provided training on the importance of total wellness as a means to good health and injury prevention, to over 40,000 health and safety professionals and hundreds of thousands of employees from large and small organizations worldwide.

The Back School's instructor base is exceptionally diverse. Comprised of healthcare, safety and human resources professionals, certified professional ergonomists and professional engineers, these individuals truly understand the business practices and principles of their students and because of this, are able to train much more effectively.    

In today's world, where wellness is of the utmost priority - we live longer and work longer before retirement - there is more need and interest than ever for people to understand their bodies and proactively protect and preserve them. The Back School will continue to passionately foster this practice through ergonomics.

For more information about our courses, products and consulting, please feel free to explore our website or call
(800) 783-7536.