complementary medicine

February 21, 2019

Boot-Strapping a Research-Base: Naturopathy’s Scientific Journey via a Journal Special Issue

Non-naturopathic doctors will have at least these reasons to explore the Special Focus Issue on Naturopathy. One is the review of the necessary scientific work by that whole system profession’s researchers to examine multimodal and whole person treatment. Its the best concerted effort of any integrative health profession. A second is to witness naturopathic medicine’s journey in the last 35 years to raise a scientific mission from scratch. A third is for insight into this still small profession’s outsized contributions to the evolution of integrative health. Their foundational work in linking science to natural health modalities is at its root. The February 2019 volume from JACM-Paradigm, Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine) is available in open access until March 20, 2019.
February 6, 2019

Heart Month: Mimi Guarneri, MD on the State of Integrative Cardiology

It was astonishing two decades ago when word emerged that medical device industry giant Medtronic – famed for its pacemakers – had made $1-million grants for cardiologists at heart centers across the country to explore complementary therapies. One seeded the creation of a center at Scripps led by interventional cardiologist Mimi Guarneri, MD. Guarneri would go on to be awarded the Bravewell Award, become the founding president of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) and most recently be presenting her Live Better Now program for PBS. I checked in with her early this “heart month” of February to get a sense of the state of integrative cardiology.
February 3, 2019

Huge Loss to US Pain Policy: Academy of Integrative Pain Management Shuts Down

For the past half decade, the Academy of Integrative Pain Management (AIPM) has carried the policy mantle for integrative pain treatment into ever more influential places.  The beacons were the 2017 and 2018 Integrative Pain Care Policy Congress. The most recent convened 70  stakeholder organizations, including key payers and federal agencies. On January 29, 2019, AIPM announced that it has ceased operations. Amidst the present opportunities for transforming pain treatment, the integrative pain field lost its engine. Oddly, the very challenges to the pharma industry in the center of the dominant pain model were part of AIPM’s undoing.
December 28, 2018

Ready for Action: Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine Hires Dale West, CAE as First Full-Time Executive Director

An organization that sees its mission as larger than its present reach hits natural barriers if it uses an association management firm. The management organization is not an “association growing” firm. Nor is the firm devoted solely to the association. In fact, the management firm’s financial incentive structure is akin to that of a fitness center: the best member is one who pays dues and never requires anything. It’s job is to manage and control something that, optimally is passionate, dynamic, and slightly out of control because it is actively flourishing in multiple directions. These disparate tendencies came to mind as good news arrived December 21, 2018 – Solstice Day – that arguably the most powerful engine in the integrative space, the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health (“the Consortium”), completed a transition away from an association management firm to its first, 100% time, fully devoted executive director.