Special Integrator Forum: Integrative Healthcare Policy Week - What Did You Think?
Written by John Weeks
Special Integrator Forum: Integrative Healthcare Policy Week - What Did You Think?
Summary: We have just completed the most significant week for integrative health care, at the policy level, in the history of the known universe. Two U.S. Senate hearings. The 3-day Institute of Medicine Summit. Many superlatives were expressed about our time being now. Yet in this very week, president Obama announced a $634 billion health care fund in which the follow-up media said nothing on integrative care, and barely mentioned wellness and certainly no paradigm shift. Many of you were present at the hearings an Summit. Others, like me, were unable to be present except through the wonders of modern technology. (Links included within.) Take a listen or read. What did you think? What are our next steps? What do you think needs to be more visible? Less pronounced? How can we gain traction? Participate in this Integrator forum: Send your comments, and a jpg for you mug if you like if I don't already have it - and let's see what we are thinking?
Send your comments to johnweeks@theintegratorblog'com for inclusion in the Special Integrator Forum.
3-day Summit
The past week has been unprecedented and is a launchpad for what is next. Two U.S. Senate hearings on integrative health. Then the 3-day Institute of Medicine National Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public. Credit the Bravewell Collaborative, financial sponsor of the IOM meeting, at $445,000, for bringing diverse energy, mounting over the last 3 decades, to a head.
With excitement and thanks, closing panelist Michael Johns, MD, chancellor of Emory University, called the meeting the
"broadest mix of (professions) in any one place, notables from many" [professions]. Then he added, commenting on the shared language we need to
establish: "'Integrative medicine', I don't think so. 'Integrative
health care,' yes."
There is much to comment on here.
What does it all mean?
What was your experience on site?
What was your experience listening to the event or reading the content?
Links for listening post facto: US Senate hearings and IOM Summit
US Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA): the talk is strong
You can listen to the two U.S. Senate hearings on integrative health care principles by clicking in here for February 23, 2009 and here for February 27, 2009 in which the subject was "Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation." Speakers were Weil, Oz, Ornish and Hyman.
U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), who
chaired the latter, announces his intent to make sure complementary and
alternative medicine are included in any health reform and that it is
"time to end discrimination against alternative healthcare practices."
The statements of the presenters can be downloaded.
Meantime, the Institute of Medicine has promised to post audio of it's
February 26-28 National Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health
of the Public within the week. Many of the papers and presentation slides are already available. For those of you who didn't listen in to any of the simulcast, check it out.
Bravewell: Energizing the entire week
Next steps?
What will be the signs of momentum?
What should be go from here?
What might be the signs we are losing our way and not taking advantage of this new platform?
How will we know that we are doing something right, moving in the most beneficial direction?
I look forward to hearing from you. And if I haven't already got it, send me a picture (jpg file preferred) to run with it. I look forward to robust give and take.
Send your commentary on the IOM meeting and the US Senate hearings to
