- John Weeks, Writer, Speaker, Change Agent. Click below to subscribe to the Integrator
- johnweeks@theintegratorblog.com
John Weeks
December 8, 2019
The saga of the Google changes that are cutting access to natural health and integrative content continues. The Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) suddenly had all its Google advertising summarily removed. Phoenix integrative pain doctor Michael Cronin, ND first saw all of his clinic’s Google ads for two leading edge pain strategies taken down. Then his clinic’s ads related to women’s health and family medicine supporting his partner’s practice also were removed. AIHM’s are back up after much negotiation, but still amidst mystery that seems to lead directly into the belly of the big data beast. Cronin gained some clarity about actions against his advertising, without stilling concerns. This article offers guidance based on what each experienced and has learned, plus perspectives from natural products quality expert Michael Levin who has feet in both the natural products and pharma camps.
November 24, 2019
How about a research department at an acupuncture and Oriental medicine school? Let’s partner with mainstream academic institutions and go after NIH grants! Wouldn’t it be terrific to have an organization that could give voice to all the licensed complementary and integrative health professions in dialogues they could not enter alone? Might this be a vehicle to foster interprofessional and inter-institutional relationships between these fields and their better-resourced peers? Might they give voice to the integrative health values and disciplines in multiple dialogues at the National Academy of Medicine and elsewhere to shape US medicine and health? And isn’t it incumbent on us to ensure that social justice is woven into the healthcare dialogue at every possibility? In October 2019, the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine chose to honor with their “Change Maker” award an individual who for a quarter century has been a leader in the charge to open such terrain: Elizabeth A. “Liza” Goldblatt, PhD, MPA/HA. I reached out to a set of her colleagues for comments on Goldblatt’s multiple contributions.
November 18, 2019
Word began to break mid-summer of two developments at the Veteran’s Administration related to the giant agency’s integrative whole health effort. One was that Tracy Gaudet, MD, the charismatic founding director of the VA’s Office of Patient-Centered Care and Cultural Transformation that birthed the initiative was moving on. The immediate response of many is concern. Yet the news came concurrently with word that the VA’s initiative is expanding from the initial 18 to 37 new sites. Even with leadership change at the top of the VA, the initiative is secure and strongly supported. I connected with Ben Kligler, MD, MPH, Gaudet’s colleague who is presently acting director for an update.
November 16, 2019
Most involved in integrative and functional medicine have by now heard of how traffic on scores of integrative health and natural products websites dropped 50%-95% via the cutting stroke of changes quietly made by Google leaders. I summarized and commented on the reporting of others in Self-Interested Whims of the Oligarchs: Google and Facebook Kill Access to Alternative and Integrative Medicine. The bias in the title was my judgement based. More questions than answers remain. I chose to explore further via a colleague of 30 years, medical writer, Erik Goldman. The traffic at his relatively conservative website, Holistic Primary Care (HPC), the hard-copy broadsheet for which he serves as founding editor, was one of those whacked. Goldman, who will host a panel on the Google issues at HPC‘s “Practitioner Channel Forum” (April 23-24 at the TWA Hotel at JFK Airport) offers a look under the covers at Google’s actions that seem to have motivations somewhere between unintended consequences and an external pernicious influences of the first order.