Pelletier-Weil Program Has Major Employers Exploring Integrative Medicine Approaches

CHIP's Pelletier - sailing into the employer/IM intersection

Summary: Kenneth R. Pelletier, PhD, MD(hc) and his Corporate Health Improvement Program (CHIP), which involves over a dozen of the nation's largest employers, is focusing its research and clinical programs on prevention and disease management "using an integrative medicine approach." Outcomes of the multi-year project will focus on both clinical and cost-effectiveness. CHIP's development since 1984, and the list of areas of potential exploration, are lessons in understanding the large employer as an integrated care partner.

(CHIP). CHIP plans to "use integrative approaches" in it next and third phase. A the present time, the CHIP members each of which ante-up a $25,000 annual grant, include the Ford Motor Company, IBM, Corning, Kimberly Clark, Dow Chemical, Medstat, Nestle, National Grig (NGT of London), NASA, Canyon Ranch Resorts and American Specialty Health.

The focus on integrative medicine approaches coincides with a move of the program to a new base at the University of Arizona Program in Integrative Medicine, founded by Andrew Weil, MD. Weil and Pelletier have been colleagues and friends for over 30 years. Areas under consideration for exploration include some with clear IM components, and others in which an integrative approach could clearly be useful.

Andrew Weil, MD, founder of the Arizona IM program

Pelletier's work with CHIP has focused on aspects of this last component, since 1984. CHIP's first phase, with its founding at the University of California School of Medicine - San Francisco (UCSF) 1984-1990, was involved with "health promotion in its infancy." CHIP developed health promotion's the initial data-base. From 1990-2001, the program moved to Stanford University School of Medicine (where Pelletier was also a leader in Stanford's IM exploration). In Phase 2, CHIP focused on the prevailing interest in the management of high cost conditions, such as cardiovascular disease. With the current Phase 3, which is a collaboration between the University of Arizona School of Medicine and the University of California Schools of Medicine, integrative medicine is firmly announced as a conceptual approach for researching health producing and cost-saving strategies.

The CHIP research development process involves identifying priorities, shaping ideas, then joint grant-writing for major projects. One study presently engaged is

Comment:  Notably - and CAM/IM researchers and NIH NCCAM staffers listen up -- all of the projects that these corporations are interested in will examine clinical outcomes and cost outcomes. Clinical outcomes alone are not sufficient to foster the uptake of these integrative protocols into the system. So, if you are interested in changing the care people receive, capture cost data!

Now, if Bluesman Robert Johnson Were an Integration Activist ...

Readers will know that the happy intersection of the interests of progressive employers in the global costs of health and integrative medicine is a song I have been singing for years.

Robert Johnson - blues at the crossroads

Integrative leaders have clarified that, next to consumers, employers are the healthcare stakeholder with the strongest alignment of economic self-interest. Employers are looking for what integrated healthcare promises: helping individuals feel better and become more functional; relieving debilitating pain and boosting low energy; diminishing use of costly procedures and emphasizing the use of appropriate pharmaceuticals (and thus avoiding many harmful and costly adverse effects).

Yet the virtual non-responsiveness of the IM, CAM and research and business communities (with a few rare exceptions) to this obvious direction - particularly given IM's adverse economic alignment with other key stakeholders - turns this hopeful intersection into a famous crossroads.