- John Weeks, Writer, Speaker, Change Agent. Click below to subscribe to the Integrator
- johnweeks@theintegratorblog.com
health policy
November 13, 2020
“Integrative light.” The term began to be used in the late 1990s by some community-based holistic, integrative, functional, and naturopathic medicine practitioners to discount and dismiss actions in the then emerging field of academic integrative medicine. I was reminded of this knee jerk tendency toward disparagement recently when a past president of the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA) sent an email query asking for names of any medical schools that “really support integrative medicine and have legit programs.” The question fell within days of receiving an annual report from one such center born in that period 23 years ago, now the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago’s downtown. It struck me that it might be useful to examine the myriad ways that at least one such entity is at work to shift medicine toward a healthier model.
September 27, 2020
From time to time someone will assume my writing of the Integrator is a “labor of love.” There is something in that, for sure. Yet the truth is that the Integrator Blog News & Reports would have been stillborn if I wasn’t paid for the work. In piecing together from various sources the income I needed for my family over the last quarter century, payment for chronicling the movement for integrative medicine and health has continuously been a part. I’ve chosen not to hit you up for a $50 or $25 or $100 annual subscription for one reason: a terrific set of individuals have on their own or through their businesses relieved me of all that stress and management. Please join me in honoring these Integrator sponsors, 2006-2020.
September 26, 2020
In academic medical centers promoting transformation toward integrative medicine and health, nurse leadership is rare. So is branding them with “spiritual” and “healing”. The usual chess game of change-making focuses on moving RCTs and systematic reviews like pawns to gain an advantage. Honoring the full professional value of licensed acupuncturists, chiropractors, naturopathic doctors and others is also rare. Most find it easier to gain the support of a dean by reducing such professionals to tools to deploy instead of as interprofessional partners. This year marks the 25th anniversary of an institution that modeled a road less traveled that included these and other distinctive, inclusive traits. The founder-director is nurse and health services researcher Mary Jo Kreitzer, RN, PhD, FAAN. I reached her for a long-overdue profile of a center that a close observer of the field has called “one of the most important centers globally for advancing integrative health.”
June 26, 2020
In a recent conference organized out of Prague and moved online, a presenter from the United Kingdom shared a list of concerns that seemed to go on forever of all that is frightening people these days. Foremost on his list were Covid19, what seem to many like authoritarian governmental measures to control its spread, uncertainty about the economy, and the questionable competence of world leaders in the face of a mounting global crisis. In the United States, these are compounded by unrest over police brutality against Black people forcing many to re-examine the legacy of 400 years of what historians call our “peculiar institution” of slavery. Author and clinician James Lake MD is an integrative psychiatrist who has witnessed the effects of this “perfect storm” close up. For Psychiatry Times, Lake authored a column on what he calls A Mental Health Pandemic: The Second Wave of COVID-19. He urged a re-think of typical mental health responses to include integrative solutions in his “Call for a National Strategy.” I reached Lake to explore what has steered his vision to make such dire predictions, and to explore how integrative methods might best figure into solutions.