Dr. Ronald Donelson is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specialized in non-operative spine care for 20 years, first in private practice and then at the Institute for Spine Care at the State University of New York in Syracuse. He was granted the Diploma in Mechanical Diagnosis & Therapy in 1991 and attained a Master of Science degree in 1998 at Dartmouth Medical School's Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences. He is the Founder and President of SelfCare First, a consulting, publishing, and low back pain disease management company.

His numerous research publications have focused on the assessment, classification, and non-operative treatment of neck and low back pain. He has written two books: the widely acclaimed "Rapidly Reversible Low Back Pain" and the recently published "Solving the Mystery", written for individuals struggling with back or neck pain.

Dr. Donelson is an Advisory Editor with the journal Spine, a member of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine neck pain guideline panel, the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine, the North American Spine Society, active with the International Forum for Primary Care Research in Low Back Pain, and is currently the Vice President of the American Back Society.