- John Weeks, Writer, Speaker, Change Agent. Click below to subscribe to the Integrator
- johnweeks@theintegratorblog.com
complementary medicine
October 10, 2020
Via Bhushan Patwardhan, PhD, an editorial board member at JACM-Paradigm, Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health (The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine), I was invited to write a backgrounder and participate in an October 8, 2020 presentation to the “Committee on Formulation of Integrative Health Policy” of India’s National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog). Aayog is a Hindi term for “policy commission.” I was introduced to the Committee by Vinod Paul, MD, who heads up the Health and Nutrition “verticals” for the NITI Aayog. The policy commission is developing directions across a range of India’s strategic interests. This Committee’s charge is to make recommendations on implementing integrative health country-wide. In my presentation, I chose to focus on 5 Key Factors learned on the ground here. I closed by sharing shared one remarkable 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
Sometimes synergies call for a solid moment of appreciation. In early 2019, Delia Chiaramonte, MD, an educator and integrative doctor who works in palliative medicine pinged me under my journal editor hat. How about a special issue of JACM-Paradigm Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health to highlight “integrative palliative care”? I liked the idea. I also knew that Chiaramonte, principally a clinician-educator, would be served to have a partner with more research experience. Two days later, Shelley Adler, PhD emailed me. The UCSF educator with fine research chops informed me she would be co-author on the next in a series of quarterly JACM commentaries from the Osher Collaborative for Integrative Medicine. The subject: the integrative-palliative intersection. Last week the JACM special issue was published with the Chiaramonte-Adler dyad offering the introductory editorial as curators and guest editors. The entire issue is in open access for a month.
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.”