Your Ideas: #10 for the Top 10 in Integrative Practice from 2009

Summary: When I published my list of the Integrator Top 10 from 2008 and left open #10 for your input. First, Bill Manahan, MD, offered his own list of 10 ideas for revisioning healthcare, and a couple of people quipped that the honoring of teh AANP was too high, or premature. Then a half-dozen other ideas drifted in. I have been slow to assemble these. Here they are, finally, in various forms: Pathways to Wellness, the Myrna Brind Center, the National Center for Homeopathy, the "new family care doctor's office," and a suggestion that we take a collective back-patting for the resilience we are showing as a community.

Pathways to Wellness: 20 years of service

Top Choice for #10

Myrna Brind: a passion for integrative medicine

Deserves mention: Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine

#4 on the list was "Resurgence and Expansion of Integrative Clinics and Centers."  I list a dozen or so examples of clinic developments. I was notified by a reader that I would have been served to have included the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. My bad. And not juts for not noting it here, but for not staying in touch with this center knowing what I learned when I first began surveying emerging centers in 1998. Back then, the Brind Center stood out early as among the most significant clinical programs, in part because it took the risk in more deeply embracing paradigm shift principles, such as the Hippocratic saying emblazoned on its home page: "The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well." The clinic is run by Daniel Monti, MD, and includes a staff six MDs, and 11 other staff practitioners. Philadelphia Magazine rates it as a "center of excellence for alternative medicine" in a special on top hospitals. A fine testament to Myrna and Ira Brind and for Myrna Brind's "impassioned advocacy for integrative medicine" which is noted here.

Homeopathy organization links with medical school,

Suggested: National Center for Homeopathy

A reader suggest the National Center for Homeopathy be listed for "the work that the organization has done to keep homeopathy alive in the US." Among (relatively) recent actions of the organization, under the leadership of Nancy Gahles, DC, CCH, RSHOM (NA) which were cited were:

• Developing a seminar series, On the Road, for self care in disaster and emergency situations following the World Trade Center and Katrina incidents.
  

• Sponsor a world wide debate on homeopathy at University of Connecticut School of Medicine (it's on our website www.thenationalcenterforhomeopathy.org), which has received the most hits ever.)

Comment:  The Integrator acknowledgments focus not on what one discipline or organization may have accomplished in a year. Rather, the focus is on what an individual discipline or field did which links and integrates with others. The argument I was presented for listing NCH mainly related to discipline-centric accomplishments. However, these two areas fit the bill.

Will AANP initiative have legs?

Questioned selection: Should the AANP, Howard and CJR 406 have been #2?

I had two readers who wished to remain anonymous suggest that I placed the wellness initiative led by the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians to create a coalition to promote Congressional Joint 406) too high on the Top 10 list, at #2. This may be a good criticism. For me, the action was catapulted there by 3 characteristics converging. First, this is an example of the the integrative practice organizations pushing the wellness paradigm most espouse, rather than merely their parochial agendas. Second, we need to form coalitions. The AANP was taking the lead in doing so. The third is, well, my 1983-1993 direct involvement with the naturopathic profession has left me hoping, 15 years hence, that the AANP would show leadership beyond its guild interests. So, perhaps the placement at #2 was aspirational. Whether it was merited will be based on whether AANP executive director

Taylor Walsh: upbeat for 2009!

Staying power of the community, and a nomination for the list for ... 2009

Reader and contributor Taylor Walsh offered a general observation: "The Top 10 list shows the staying power attained by the community. Next year it will be great to add: 'National Integrative Wellness Association formed to advance the inclusion of wellness strategies and practice throughout the US financial and clinical health systems.' An honest to god lobbying operation with real lawyers, favorite spirits in the Congress and whatever else elevates wellness to parity with the fix-it system." Walsh is at