Brief Notes: Personnel Changes, Organization Action
Summary: Bill Meeker, DC, MPH takes over presidency of Palmer West, Christine Choate, DC, PHD to lead Palmer's research ... Jeanne Achterberg, PhD, moving the frontier of medicine ... Pain experts learning integration from James Dillard, MD, DC, CAc ... Update on the Jahnke/McLean Health Action, plus James Strohecker, PhD's new Wellness Inventory ... Lori Knutson, RN, named AHNA's Holistic Nurse of the year ... and association action from SAR, AANP, IAF, IAYT and more ...
Meeker and Choate: Changes at Palmer Chiropractic College
 William Meeker, DC, MPH
Palmer College of Chiropractic has announced that William Meeker, DC, MPH, has been named as president of the college's West Campus, in San Jose, California. Meeker, a 1982 graduate of Palmer West, is a well-known leader of the chiropractic profession. He served most recently as executive director of research for Palmer College, his base as primary investigator on a major NIH NCCAM center grant for chiropractic research. Palmer has a third campus, in Port Orange, Florida. Peter Martin, DC, president of the Florida campus, had been jointly serving as interim president at the San Jose campus.
 Christine Choate, DC, PhD
The move at Palmer also provoked a change for Integrator advisor Christine Goertz Choate, DC, PhD, until recently the deputy director of the Samueli Institute for Information Biology. Choate, a long-time colleague of Meeker, will become leader of the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research. She will remain in the Beltway, her current base, and work out of a new Palmer office. In her role with Palmer she will also, according to the release, "monitor and coordinate government relations work relative to the profession." Choate has a long research resume which includes a period as program officer for health services research at NIH NCCAM, for which she remains an advisor. Choate maintains a faculty position at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Maryland.
Achterberg: Next Step in Frontier Medicine?
 Jeanne Achterberg, PhD
Pioneering mind-body and frontier medicine researcher Jeanne Achterberg, PhD is "on a hunt for an imaging facility" to stage would she believes will be "another groundbreaking study" - this one proposed to her by her colleague Larry Dossey, MD, and dealing with "mirror neurons." Achterberg told the Integrator that she has "a low tolerance for the mundane and a persistent desire to seek the next dimension in healing," which she acknowledged is "a frequently exhausting enterprise." Achterberg, now based in Monterrey, California, after some years working on the Big Island at North Hawaii Community Hospital, is willing to pick up and move to right facility to engage the research that is her passion. She can be contacted through her website.
Dillard: Speaking to Conventional Docs on Integrated Pain Care
 James Dillard, MD, DC, CAc
James Dillard, MD, DC, CAc is the featured presenter on complementary and integrative medicine strategies for the North American Pain Forum. Dillard, an assistant professor of clinical rehabilitation medicine at Columbia University tells the Integrator he's
already presented to over 16,000 pain specialists in this series of
forums which have a goal of reaching over 100,000 practitioners. Says
Dillard: "It's very evidence-based. I like to show these doctors that
they can do these things and not lose their scientific rigor. It's an
opportunity to convince people to stray outside of their fairly
limited range of drugs, injections and surgeries." The forums are produced in collaboration with the American Pain Society (the most conservative of the professional pain societies) and the Foundation for Better Health Care.
Abbott Northwestern's Knutson Named Holistic Nurse of the Year
A belated report that the American Holistic Nurses Association named Lori Knutson, RN, its Holistic Nurse of the Year. Knutson serves as the director of the Institute for Healthand Healing at Abbott Northwestern Hospital
part of the Allina system. The program is believed to be the largest
holistic nurse-directed integrated care program in the country. Knutson's service at the hospital in growing holistic services goes back nearly two decades.
 Roger Jahnke, OMD
 Rebecca McLean
Jahnke, McLean, Strohecker: Health and Wellness Initiatives
Author, consultant and co-founder of Health Action, Roger Jahnke, OMD, shares that over 200 health coaches have now been trained through Health Action, which he founded with his partner and spouse Rebecca McLean. McLean took the lead in developing a Circle of Life mind-body wellness and coaching program which the two have have offered to scores of clients nationally. Jahnke serves on the national advisory council of the National Health Wellness and Convention Congress (NHWCC), a gathering which meets this week alongside the national conference of consumer directed health plans ...
 James Strohecker
One of Jahnke's fellows on the NHWCC advisory council, James Strohecker, president and co-founder of Health World Online, the flagship alternative medicine and wellness site, is presently focusing on the wellness side of that mix. Strohecker is active with a new venture, the Wellness Inventory, a "whole person assessment program." Strohecker was the first, significant resource on the range of alternative medicines, Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide.
Organization Actions and Meetings
The American Holistic Medical Association
has a new management company and has returned to its northwest roots,
with a new office in Edmonds, Washington ... Meantime, the National Certification Commission on Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine
has left the beltway for a less expensive Jacksonville, Florida, where
the agency will be able to purchase its own building. NCCAOM, which has over 20,000 diplomates, is accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies
(NCCA)....
The first Symposium on Yoga Therapy and Research, scheduled for January 18-21, has 800 reservations, it's maximum. This initiative of the International Association of Yoga Therapists appears to have met a yearning. IAYT published a complete issue of the IAYT-sponsored Integrator series on the Future of Yoga Therapy in the December 2006 issue of Yoga Therapy in Practice ...
One among the "portfolio of activities" announced for the Disparity Reducing Advances Project of the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) is "to develop a planned care model that provides
quality health care integrated with preventative services." IAF's partners will be the US Bureau of Primary Health Care, the Samueli Institute and other DRA Project partners. The plan is to " develop an integrated
primary care model that incorporates complementary and
alternative methods of care into primary care for low income and minority
populations." Among those active is Erica Oberg, ND, of Bastyr University and the University of Washington. The DRA Project was born of the passion of IAF president, futurist (and Integrator advisor) Clem Bezold, PhD.
The last date for abstract submissions for the IN-CAM Mini Symposium of the Canadian Interdisciplinary Network for
Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research is December 15. The meeting will be held at McGill University in Montreal on February 2, 2007. The focus of this symposium is CAM Research: From Experience
to Evidence.
The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians has recently focused its resources on developing relationships with the National Foundation of Women Legislators. According to the association's monthly e-news, a team of NDs recently presented an AANP initiative to the NFWL Healthcare Committee called the School Wellth Program™. Components include wellness modules developed by Bernie Noe, ND (see related Integrator article), clinical services to schools pioneered by Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and the Salugenecist program developed by Joseph Pizzorno, ND. The AANP's executive director, Karen Howard, was nominated to the NFWL board as a private sector member.
The Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR) will hold its
annual conference at the University of
Maryland, Baltimore, on
November 8 - 11, 2007. The co-presidents of SAR are Lixing Lao, Ph.D., L.Ac., and Rosa Schnyer, L.Ac. Lao is a long-time collaborator with U Maryland IM leader and 2005 Bravewell Award winner and acupuncture researcher Brian Berman, MD ...
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