Top 10 For Policy And Action In Integrative Medicine And Health In 2018
Medicine is changing to reflect popular interest, evidence, and an emergent movement in health systems toward personal empowerment and health creation. What we call "integrative medicine" was made possible, in part, by work in the 1980s of complementary and alternative health care practitioners like chiropractors, acupuncturists, massage therapists and naturopathic doctors. They laid a groundwork of licensing and certification that enhanced popular interest in, and access to, natural health services.
Just so, present action and policy are laying infrastructure that will inform and embolden participants into the future. Evidence of effectiveness is a classically "necessary but not sufficient" tool in fostering integration. The year 2012 put two jewels in this crown. 796 lower per year for total health costs. A long-awaited review led by Rand economist and naturopathic doctor Patricia Herman, N.D., Ph.D. Harvard's David Eisenberg, M.D.
28 high-quality studies. The emergence of a positive Swiss government's report on homeopathy added fuel. Time for payers to be more proactive. Among payers taking the lead, none is more bodacious in his inclusion of CAM in his benefits plan or confidence in cost savings than global manufacturer Parker Hannifin's CEO Don Washkewicz.
In "A Solution to Our Country's Big Health Care Problem?" Washkewicz admits that cause and effect aren't clear. All we know about what the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will do to access to complementary and alternative health care practitioners and services is that we don't know. Will hard-won "mandates" for coverage over recent decades be lost if services and providers are not in Essential Health Benefits (E.H.B.)?
Or might they be expanded to self-insurers via that act's Section 2706's non-discrimination clause, as some believe? A New York Times article featured Jeannie Kang, LAC, past president of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, on her work to get acupuncture into E.H.B.s in California and five other states.
The American Chiropractic Association is activating its state leaders to get to the table. In Oregon, naturopathic doctor Bill Walter, N.D. Integrative medicine and health care are, at their best, team sports. One provider can't do it all. Licensed acupuncture and Oriental medicine practitioners, holistic nurse, massage therapists, mind-body specialists, coaches and others need to be linked with the physician-level services of chiropractors, naturopathic doctors and medical doctors and surgical specialists in optimal teams.
That means bringing the disciplines together as they are educated. Pent-up demand was evident when the announcement of the International Congress for Educators in Complementary and Integrative Medicine drew over 250 proposals. So what happens when a population of individuals are treated by integrative medicine physicians? A Seattle area research partnership between an HMO-based research center and naturopathic medicine-based institution of natural health sciences is taking a lead in researching the key questions.
The collaborators from Group Health Research Institute (GHRI) and Bastyr University published an influential pilot led by Ryan Bradley, N.D., MPH showing the success in lowering blood sugar and fostering habit change via naturopathic care's personalized, multi-modality approach. A similar team led by Erica Oberg, N.D., MPH followed up with an exploration of what a GHRI newsletter called the "secret sauce" that helped these patients toward greater self-efficacy. That something is right in the care was evident when Bastyr's teaching clinic ranked first among all Northwest primary care clinics in a Puget Sound Health Alliance survey of patient experience.
The link between the two institutions was recently fused further when GHRI's Dan Cherkin, Ph.D., a colleague on both the studies, chose to take an additional position as chair of Bastyr's Reseach Institute. Notably, Cherkin was also part of the cost study using MEPS data noted above. While practitioners and academic health care institutions work toward inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration, the critically important philanthropic sector has typically put its apples in the baskets of M.D.-led initiatives.
For most, empowering the institutions connected to the 400,000-plus licensed "CAM" practitioners has been a non-starter. There are signs of awareness that moving integrative health can benefit from investment in these other sectors is growing. Philanthropist and integrative medicine activist Ruth Westreich and the Westreich Foundation epitomizes the new thinking.
100,000 gift. Westreich subsequently joined the Board of Trustees of the multidisciplinary Bastyr University to assist its opening of a naturopathic college in California. Westreich subsequently joined the board of the Samueli Institute with its historically multidisciplinary agenda. This new philanthropy realizes that moving multiple, inter-related pieces on the chess board can best advance the transformation of U.S. An awakening juggernaut in the medical doctor sector of the development of integrative health and medicine is the American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABOIM) as an approved specialty of the American Board of Physician Specialties.
ABOIM's still-quiet influence will pick up speed with the first certifications in 2013. After announcement, the gestation period appears to be provoking healing and converging of disparate forces in holistic and integrative medicine. Grandparenting guidelines have reassured those who have been in the field for decades and held prior certification.
The quality of accredited education in chiropractic, naturopathic medicine and acupuncture and Oriental medicine was honored through recognizing those with dual training (M.D., D.C. First tests are expect by mid-year. Meantime, the ABPS' list of 21 approved fellowships is testament to the current penetration of integrative medicine as an innovation in the health professional education of medical doctors.
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