Integrative Medicine, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Health Round-up #74: December 2013

Policy
-WHO publishes Traditional Medicine Strategy for 2014-2023
-IHPC adds voice to chorus of coalitions opposing HR 2817 effort to maintain discrimination in health care

No mention of integrative health in primary care reports

-Taylor Walsh on Health Affairs-AAMC Briefing: Continued non-inclusion of licensed integrative health and medicine in the workforce
-Oregon chiropractors take non-discrimination fight (Section 2706) to Governor Kitzhaber
-Washington States naturopathic doctors begin optional role as Medicaid providers
Research
-NCCAM-funded study on EDTA chelation therapy shows compelling value for people with diabetes
-Clinic led by Dan Labriola, ND receives $560,000 Takeda grant to test naturopathic protocol for limiting adverse effects of firm's Velcade
Academic Medicine
-Entrepreneurial Maryland University of Integrative Health announces "philosophy in action" certificate plus a deal with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition
Organizations
-Beth Sommers: Report on Alternative and Complementary Health Practices content at the APHA 2013
-American Botanical Council blasts USA Today and BMC Medicine for falsehoods on the herb industry
-Institute for Alternative Futures, a key player in the integrative health and medicine movement, declares a new vision statement

Clinton: cameo appearance at Bravewell

Philanthropy
-Column honors Bravewell Collaborative at the time of their announced "sun-setting," with an appearance by Hillary Clinton
-Robert Wood Johnson funds Kaptchuk's placebo work at Harvard
Miscellaneous
-Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine enters 20th year with huge increase in reach
-Smithsonian Galleries, yoga group and GWU integrative medicine co-sponsor Medical Yoga Symposium
People
-Sandi Amoils, MD the president-elect of the American Medical Acupuncture Association
-Integrative pain pioneer Heather Tick, MD' Holistic Pain Relief published
-Heather Greenlee, ND, PhD, first naturopathic president of the Society for Integrative Oncology
______________________________


Policy

New strategic plan for T&CM

WHO publishes Traditional Medicine Strategy for 2014-2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) has published its Traditional Medicine Strategy 2014-2023. The document differs from the 2002-2005 strategic plan in routinely referencing not just TM but rather "Traditional & Complementary Medicine (T&CM)" to better link traditional use to the growing option of traditional medicines in countries where industrial medicine dominates. The goals of the publication are to support WHO member states in: "1) harnessing the potential contribution of T&CM to health, wellness, people-centered health care and (universal health coverage (UHC); and 2) promoting safe and effective use of T&CM through the regulation, research and integration of T&CM products, practices and practitioners into the health system, as appropriate." The 78-page document includes 12 pages of "Strategic objectives, strategic directions and strategic options." The document was produced following four working group meetings during 2011-2013 of 15-20 international advisers.

Invited to participate

Comment: The new plan differs significantly from the 2002-2005 WHO strategic plan for traditional medicine -- the only prior such strategy document - in chiefly two ways. One is the focus on not just products but also "practices and practitioners." This is related to the WHO's interest into their integration into the health systems and the role of T&CMs in contributing to the WHO's broad goal of universal health coverage (UHC). For these reasons, I had the honor of being invited to participate in two of the planning sessions on behalf of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC). The organization was included as perhaps the most significant, functional, multidisciplinary organization of T&CM practitioners/academics globally. Those who open the new document will realize that the focus is surely on the rest of the world. I was the only U.S. person present at both meetings. The NIH NCCAM has discontinued the only coordinating center in the U.S. related to the WHO's T&CM initiative. Canadians had a stronger presence, including the lead author, Andrea Burton.  (Thanks to Burton and Integrator adviser Paolo Roberti di Sarsina, MD for sending the report. Side note: Roberti di Sarsina is the only Italian author cited in the report's references.) Curious about any of your feedback.

Weighs in against 2817

IHPC adds voice to chorus of coalitions opposing HR 2817 effort to maintain discrimination in health care

On October 16, 2013, the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium sent a letter to the Congressmen Fred Upton (R)and Henry Waxman (D-CA) in opposition to the misleadingly-named Protect Patient Access to Quality Health Professionals Act of 2013 (H.R. 2817). IHPC is a national coalition comprised of 13 organizations and institutions "representing a variety of licensed and state and nationally certified healthcare professionals." HR 2817 would revoke Section 2706 of the Affordable Care Act, called Non-Discrimination in Health Care.  IHPC argues, in part, that Sec 2706 "safeguards patient access to non-MD/DO state licensed or state certified providers, including (but not limited to) chiropractors, naturopathic physicians, acupuncturists, massage therapists, osteopaths, optometrists, nurse practitioners and licensed or direct entry midwives and podiatrists, as long as they are licensed by the state and can treat the condition within that provider's scope of practice." The bill is backed by conventional medical specialties who claim a risk to patients from expanding scopes of other disciplines.

Comment:  IHPC is the third major practitioner coalition to weigh-in their opposition, following the Coalition for Patients Rights,  as reported here in the November 2013 Round-up, and PARCA, as reported here in the September 13, 2013 Integrator Round-up. Nice concerted action from the, in this case, "non-allied healthcare professions."

Walsh: reports on the absence of integrative practitioners

Taylor Walsh on Health Affairs-AAMC Briefing: Continued non-inclusion of licensed integrative health and medicine in the workforce

In a report in The Integrator, journalist-integrative health consultant Taylor Walsh writes: "The reconfiguration of the American healthcare workforce is a topic of intense examination, but if a national conference in Washington last week is any indication, the role for integrative health disciplines will remain ‘a hidden dimension,' as described by the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care in its 2013 white paper, ‘Meeting the Nation's Primary Care Needs.'" The briefing was sponsored by the Health Affairs and Academic Medicine (the Journal of the American Association of Medical Colleges), both of whose November 2013 issues were devoted to the workforce challenges addressed at the briefing.

Walsh continues: "While the topic of non-physician leadership in primary care and in other points of delivery was thoroughly discussed, any role for integrative disciplines as contributors to such a solution was oblique, at best. But it is also clear that sharing any physician-assigned responsibility even with nurse practitioners or physician assistants will be a tremendous culture pull that will not quickly come to pass." Walsh adds that two presenters offered the most potent visions for adjusting the prevailing medical education culture: Edward Salsberg, director of the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis at HRSA, and George Thibault, president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, which has take a leading role in funding interprofessional care and workforce development innovations.

Goldstein: co-author of ACCAHC report

Comment: I am a co-author with Michael Goldstein, PhD of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research on the ACCAHC report referenced by Walsh. The project made clear that, whatever the exclusionary views of the current policy professionals in charge of workforce planning, they are missing a significant chunk of what, in this patient-centered care era, Goldstein and I chose to call "primary providers of care." These are the licensed so-called CAM practitioners who millions of people turn to instead of their formal, system-centered "PCPs," whether MDs or PAs or nurses. We don't have a clear estimate, but there is no doubt that these licensed practitioners are relieving a significant burden from the mainstream primary care system. They should, in an open and unprejudiced society, and more certainly in a nominally patient-centered system, be in the workforce calculations and dialogue. Walsh's account of the meeting is thoughtful and worth a read.

State ripe with activity on non-discrimination

Oregon chiropractors take non-discrimination fight (Section 2706) to Governor Kitzhaber

The November 22, 2013 edition of the Lund Report on Oregon health policy shares that the state's chiropractors are pushing hard for a broad inclusion of chiropractors under the Section 2706 provision of the Affordable Care Act. Chiropractors Take Discrimination Fight to the Governor notes that Governor John Kitzauber, MD supports a broad interpretation. It was Kitzauber, according to the article, who argued for their necessary inclusion in the state's coordinated care organizations. The Oregon Chiropractic Association's Vern Saboe, DC, whose lobbying work is featured, argues that "chiropractors are equipped to do much more than just spinal manipulation and can treat the 60 most common conditions dealt with by primary care physicians such as hypertension, mild diabetes, hypothyroidism and food allergies." Adds Saboe: "We intend to keep the pressure on so that the federal law is enacted as it was intended from the top down, and the governor is absolutely supportive that we should be fully included in the healthcare system. Chiropractic is a profession, not a single modality."

Comment: Fighting words! Notably, Oregon is a state with a broad scope of practice for chiropractors and a chiropractic academic program at the University of Western States that promotes a functional medicine approach to chiropractic and a role for doctors of chiropractic in primary care. A challenge for the profession is to help payers distinguish between those who are "primary care for back pain" or more broadly primary care. Saboe's last comment should be taken up, ceaselessly, as a banner by each of the so-called "CAM" disciplines: "We are professions, not single modalities." Each member must start by reprogramming their colonized minds from ever using the "modality" or "therapy" word to describe what happens in  their offices. Side note: a more recent issue of The Lund Report shares that the Blue Shield firm Regence has moved to limit access to licensed integrative health practitioners.

ND group moves into Medicaid

Washington States naturopathic doctors begin optional role as Medicaid providers

An article entitled Medicaid - A New Environment for NDs in the Fall 2013 issue of the newsletter of the Washington Association of Naturopathic Physicians lays out a brave new world that will open for these practitioners in January 2014. The writer notes that the opening into "Apple Health," the state's re-named Medicaid program, "is a significant achievement for our profession in terms of recognition and inclusion of naturopathic medicine in the health care system" and also "brings the promise of expanding the value of our medicine to a population that has not had much access to it in the past." The writer is honest about the impact on practices: "At this point we don't really know." Then: "Below is the information we have thus far, but be forewarned - these are uncharted waters and before you rush to ‘sign up for more patients', we really encourage you to do your research." Those NDs who wish to take a look at the assembled piloting log for these waters are urged to read on here.  The author suggests that those who participate share their stories so that WANP can build an archive of Medicaid experience.

Comment: Key features of health professionals of the future, as recommended through the Lancet Report of Health Professionals for a New Century is that they be 1) leaders, that their leadership be focused on 2) "change agency," and that they be 3) comfortable with ambiguity. Engaging Medicaid, choosing to be under-paid and bureaucratically Lilliputianized in order to meet one's mission to serve the underserved or advance one's profession, looks an awful lot like falling down a rabbit hole; or, if more awake to the challenges, the engagement of a hero's journey.  

Research

Publishes positively on chelation

NCCAM-funded study on EDTA chelation therapy shows compelling value for people with diabetes

The November 26, 2013 e-news from the NIH NCCAM led with a title and link that will have the mainstream cardiology and endocrinology communities diving deep for hoped for methodological bungling. Entitled New TACT Analysis Shows EDT-Chelation Therapy Has Beneficial Outcomes for People with Diabetes. The brief by NCCAM director Josie Briggs, MD closed the first paragraph with: "EDTA-based chelation treatments produced a marked reduction in cardiovascular events and [reduction in] death in participants with diabetes." Then, interestingly: "Furthermore, the results suggest that treatments had no benefit in those who did not have diabetes."  This is the second significant publication that has shown value from EDTA chelation therapy. The first, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found a slight, positive statistical significance relative to cardiac events in people with previous myocardial infarction. Briggs shared that, for the diabetes drill-down, the positive "effects are large" and "strongly" warrant future study. She adds that "these findings are a reminder that we need to keep an open mind in research, as scientific investigation is rich with examples of unexpected outcomes."

Comment: The NCCAM significant investment in the EDTA-chelation trial has been viewed by NCCAM's antagonists as one of the most insane of the agency's boon-doggles. This study, more than the first, gives an attaboy to the agency for examining outcomes such as US Senator Harkin urged in the agency's mandate: real world look at perhaps the most significant therapy, from an economic perspective, used by what were once called "alternative medical doctors."   

Labriola: clinician receives grant for integrative oncology study

Clinic led by Dan Labriola, ND receives $560,000 grant to test naturopathic protocol to limit adverse effects of Velcade

In an unusual and perhaps historic move, Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company has  granted Seattle Northwest Natural Clinic $560,000 for a two-year trial that will "focus on mitigating a potential side effect of Velcade, an FDA approved, targeted chemotherapy approved for the treatment of multiple myeloma and other cancers" according to an article in the Ballard News-Tribune.  The clinic was founded by Dan Labriola, ND.  The study will focus on a side effect, peripheral neuropathy, which manifests as numbness in the extremities. The writer continues: "Northwest Natural Clinic's method, which has extensive anecdotal effectiveness, uses a combination of natural amino acid and a special form of Vitamin B to limit the neuropathy."

Comment: Labriola has been a long-time leader in integrative oncology. His national visibility dates back to a study he had published in Oncology in 1999 that explored possible interactions between antioxidants and chemotherapy. His clinic has had a long affiliation with Swedish Hospital for which he is listed under physicians and providers. This appears to be a good sort of outcomes-type, researching the way we practice, real-world study that NIH NCCAM would be funding in spades were it to take seriously the rfal-world charge mentioned above and in Section C of its mandate.


Academic Medicine

MUIH's Vitale: entrepreneurial push at integrative health university

Entrepreneurial MUIH announces "philosophy in action" certificate plus a deal with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition

The Maryland University of Integrative Health (formerly Tai Sophia Institute) has announced a new Philosophy and Healing in Action 12-month certificate course. The program features the institution's co-founders, acupuncturists and authors Bob Duggan, and Dianne Connelly. The entrepreneurial MUIH has also recently signed an agreement with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) through which the latter's graduates have an opportunity to apply for three MUIH Masters' level programs with advanced standing.

Comment: The one-two combination of MUIH's business-savvy Frank Vitale, president, and academic lead Judith Broida, PhD has moved MUIH into a remarkably fecund era in which new programs and agreements to support others, like that which IIN, seem to be rolling out monthly. The certificate program will benefit from Duggan's outspoken radicalism about what we need to be doing to create a culture in medicine that focuses on health creation. He was advocated, with tongue only partly in cheek, that acupuncturists be licensed through Parks & Recreation to keep the focus on  health. Duggan is a mentee of the influential, radical health activist Ivan Illich, author of Medical Nemesis. 


Organizations

Sommers: reports integrative content at APHA

Beth Sommers: Report on Alternative and Complementary Health Practices content at the APHA 2013

I invited researcher-clinician Elizabeth Sommers, PhD, MPH, LAc, a principal with Boston's Pathways to Health, to share her perspective on the Alternative and Complementary Health Practices content at the recent American Public Health Association (APHA) meeting. Sommers, who co-chairs the group, reports: 

"Overall, I was very heartened by this year's annual meeting. First and foremost, the level of increased awareness and acceptance of integrative/complementary approaches has significantly improved. Great to be appreciated by our public health colleagues! Secondly, this year's programming was truly comprehensive and in alignment with the annual meeting theme ‘Think Global. Act Local'.

Sommers continues: "Our Alternative and Complementary Health Practices group hosted almost 100 oral and poster presentations over 2 ½ days. Highlights included a panel on best practices around the world that featured Dr. Herbert Benson (‘The Global and Location Aspects of the Relaxation Response') and Dr. Jon Adams (co-founder of the Network of Researchers in Public Health in CAM - ‘Developing the Public Health of Complementary and Traditional Medicine: Critical Methods and Translational Research').

"Our group is poised to grow in numbers and apply for section status in APHA. When we do this, we'll also update our name. Although we are very grateful to Dr. Alan Trachtenberg for co-founding our group and giving it a name that started with an ‘a', it's time to phase out the ‘alternative' and replace it with more appropriate title. This process will take a few months and involve our membership. I'll keep you posted. I expect our new name will include some of the following words: integrative, Traditional, health.

Complementary health practices section growing

Sommers concludes: "In terms of acupuncture, it was great to see so many presenters describe the diverse settings into which acupuncture has been incorporated. There seem to be many paradigms for how to do this, and hearing about the variety of approaches was truly inspiring. Consumers are demanding that their health care teams function in unified and patient-centric ways."

Sommers notes the 2014 APHA annual meeting will be held in New Orleans Nov. 15-19. The theme will be "Health Geography: How where you live affects your health and well-being." Those who wish to hear keynote presenters for the regular APHA content from the 2013 meeting can click here. 

Comment: Ah, the re-naming process, always an issue for anything cornered, clustered and colonized as "CAM" or some version thereof, by conventional medicine. While Arnold Relman, MD, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, is widely quoted for saying that ultimately it's not "integrative medicine" or "alternative medicine" but just "good medicine" toward which we are striving, the higher standard is actually "good health." Using "integrative" and "Traditional" and "health" are all good paths out of the CAM trap.             .

25th year for herb group

American Botanical Council blasts USA Today and BMC Medicine for falsehoods on the herb industry

The American Botanical Council punched-back hard at what it calls flaws and falsehoods in two recent media reports, one in the peer-reviewed literature and the second in the popular media. The first was a blast at BMC Medicine in which ABC marshaled its considerable scientific expertise in a release entitled "Science Group Says Article on DNA Barcode Analysis of Herbs Is Flawed, Contains Errors, Creates Confusion, and Should Be Retracted." The peer-reviewed critique of the BMC paper is here. ABC's other timely response was to a column prominently featured in USA Today that urged consumers to avoid herbal supplements. ABC responded to the claim of the author, Kevin Pho, MD that herbs are not regulated. They pointed to ABC's document called The Regulated Dietary Supplement Industry: Myths of an Unregulated Industry Dispelled.

Comment: The tack NIH NCCAM director Josie Briggs, MD took with the anti-NCCAM naysayers at polarization-based medicine applies here. See NCCAM's Briggs calls for "more nuanced" conversation about complementary and integrative medicine in JAMA editorial.  Really, now, must we still be arguing this in such polarized terms? One might as well argue that there is no value in the FDA because from time to time their misguided approvals result in the deaths of hundreds or thousands. Good for ABC to come out fighting.

Defines new vision

Institute for Alternative Futures, a key player in the integrative health and medicine movement, declares a new vision statement

The Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) is an organization of futurists co-founded by futurists Alvin Toffler and internationally acclaimed current chair Clem Bezold, PhD. IAF has multiple relationships to the integrative health and medicine world. The organization has declared a new vision: "IAF opens eyes, hearts and minds to alternative futures showing that aspiration is powerful and enduring. We partner with individuals, communities and organizations worldwide to look over the horizon so that their decisions today are accountable to tomorrow. IAF helps to create equitable, sustainable futures shaped by kindness, wisdom, and foresight. Our work and our lives embody this hope for preferred futures." In a reflection that includes the influential organization's 1993 vision, IAF president and senior futurist Jonathan Peck particularly noted the focus on partnerships and the "IAF helps to create equitable, sustainable futures shaped by kindness, wisdom and foresight." 

Bezold: numerous key roles in integrative health/medicine movement

Comment: IAF, and Bezold in particular, have developed quite a resume in the integrative health and medicine space. IAF produced an influential works on the future of "Complementary and Alternative Medicine" in the late 1990s and a series of reports on the future of chiropractic, including most recently Chiropractic 2025. Bezold had key roles in developing the Integrative Medicine Industry Leadership Summits (2000-2002) and facilitated the influential National Policy Dialogue to Advance Integrated Care (2001). He and IAF have worked with the Bravewell Collaborative. Closest to home for me, he was the person who, in 2005 when I was returning from a sojourn away in Central America and wanted to create a new newsletter, suggested that I try something new that had popped up while I was away: "blogging." (Never mind that the Integrator Blog has never been a blog, as such.) Bezold is a just, committed man, and a mentor to me, whose values are stamped all over that concluding line: "... sustainable futures shaped by kindness, wisdom and foresight." Having those traits guide us would be, to use a term Clem taught me, a "preferred future."

Philanthropy

Bravewell's symbol

Column honors Bravewell Collaborative at the time of their announced "sun-setting" - with an appearance by Hillary Clinton

The opportunity to attend the fifth and final Bravewell Gala (with the sponsorship of a Bravewell member) at which president Christy Mack announced the decision of the organization of philanthropists in integrative medicine to "sunset" its operations, led me to write this for the Huffington Post: Honoring How Powerful Consumers Known as Bravewell Implanted Integrative Medicine in the System. The whole system, strategic approach to investment of this group of philanthropists - mainly vital women in the 55-70 range - sequentially boosted this field in numerous, powerful ways: infrastructure, education, authority, evidence, visibility and leadership.  There is truly a remarkable legacy. Of special note is a comment on the Huffington Post article from Mack, the second and final president. She underscores a point which she likes to make when introducing her view of the field of integrative medicine with any audience: "Integrative Medicine is not complementary and alternative medicine."

Mack: response on Huffington Post site

Comment: I have had my differences with Bravewell's strategy - mainly with its essential disregard of the potential value in investing in any organizations or initiatives not run by MDs (with the exception of one integrative nursing program). The choice, and of course it is hers and theirs to make, has always felt essentially non-integrative and old-medicine - hardly transformative. Meantime, one cannot complain about the ability of these women to access power. One visitor to the cocktail party at the Gala was Hillary Clinton. Those with long memories will know that candidate Clinton has a deep association with the field. She convened a 1993 meeting at the White House of 20 alternative medicine leaders. This was a break-through moment for the field back when she was running the ill-fated Clinton healthcare reform. Her presence, alongside the leaders of the Institute of Medicine media personality Mehmet Oz, MD, was a fitting closing touch.

Major foundation supports Kaptchuk

Robert Wood Johnson funds Kaptchuk's placebo work at Harvard

Better late than never department (re my reporting): earlier this year the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) awarded a $250,000 "Pioneering Ideas" grant to Harvard's Ted Kaptchuk, OMD, to support his Program in Placebo Studies at Harvard University. As shared in this blog on the RWJF site, the influential foundation sees this grant as "just one way we're exploring the power of non-medical interventions to change behavior and improve health outcomes, from behavioral economics to positive health."

Comment:  This is among the first significant RWJF grants, if not the first, to anyone associated significantly with the integrative health and medicine movement, with which Kaptchuk, a licensed acupuncturist, is. (The foundation once made a small grant to support an Urban Zen initiative.) The last time that placebo was a significant bridge to these fields was that the exploration of the placebo's value was the closest that NIH NCCAM director Josie Briggs had been to the field before her appointment to her role in early 2008. Whatever it takes.


Miscellaneous

Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, celebrated JACM's growth and reach as it enters is 20^th year. According to Liebert, the journal has readers in over 40 countries plus some 106 low-income countries, via a "collaboration with the World Health Organization." In addition, interest in past articles produces "over 10,000 full-text downloads per month and nearly 20,000 abstract downloads per month." This marks a 22% increase over 2012. Liebert also announced collaboration with the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for

A major factor in the CAM/IM evolution

Integrative Medicine to publish abstracts and pre-conference podcasts for the International Research Congress on Integrative Medicine and Health, to be held May 13-16, 2014 in Miami. JCAM is an official journal of the International Society for Complementary Medicine Research (ISCMR), a co-sponsor of the Miami meeting. It is also the official journal of The Society for Acupuncture Research. Kim Jobst serves as editor-in-chief.

Comment:  I recall when Liebert leapt into the scene with "the blue Journal" - JACM" - and the "green journal," which was not peer-reviewed and targeted clinicians and patients. Who is this woman? The durability of Jobst as editor is certainly a cornerstone of the publication's longevity. Credit Liebert for hanging in there.

Co-sponsor of Smithsonian event

Smithsonian Galleries, yoga group and GWU integrative medicine co-sponsor Medical Yoga Symposium

On January 11-12, 2014 Washington, DC, the Medical Yoga Symposium will be held in Washington, DC as a collaboration between the Center for Integrative Medicine at the George Washington University and Therapeutic Yoga of Greater Washington. The event is offered in collaboration with the Smithsonian's Freer Sackler Museums of Asian Art. These galleries are hosting an exhibit entitled Yoga: The Art of Transformation. Among the presenters on the bill, as noted in the November 11 newsletter of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, are keynoter Dean Ornish, plus Lorenzo Cohen, Rob Saper, Chris Streeter and Eric Schoomaker. Chiropractor Partap Khalsa will represent NIH NCCAM director Josephine Briggs. Long time Yoga therapy leaders Sat Bir Khalsa, Larry Payne, and Richard Miller are also on the bill. Noted the newsletter: "This is a groundbreaking collaboration between museums and the emerging fields of integrative medicine."

Comment: The event brings to mind one of the earliest collaborations that elevated integrative practices in the Capitol, back in the mid-to-late 1990s, when anthropologist and integrative medicine author and sometimes academic Marc Micozzi, MD, PhD, who was then the founding director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Micozzi convened a gathering on alternative medicines. A search of the site now only reveals the museum creating space for an anti-CAM presentation.


People

Amoils: next president at AAMA

Sandi Amoils, MD the president-elect of the American Medical Acupuncture Association

Long-time Cincinatti-based integrative medical doctor and acupuncturist Sandy Amoils, MD is the president-elect of the American Medical Acupuncture Association. Amoils and her spouse Steve Amoils, MD were pioneers in forming a hospital-based integrative medicine center in the upper Midwest. The two have since moved the Alliance Institute for Integative Medicine out on its own under the fetching URL of www.myhealingpartner.com. The team has co-authored Get Well & Stay Well - Optimal Health through Transformational Medicine^TM. Amoils will take over the presidency in May 2014.

Tick: new pain book out

Integrative pain pioneer Heather Tick, MD' Holistic Pain Relief published

Back in the early 1990s when the concept of interprofessionalism had not year received its huge boost from the Canadian government, and long before the Health Resources Services Administration joined with a group of U.S. foundations to start the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education, Heather Tick, MD was creating a remarkably integated, team-based, pain clinic in Toronto. Tick, presently the holder and endowed professorship in integrative pain at the University of Washington has recently published Holistic Pain Relief: Dr. Tick's Breakthrough Strategies to Manage and Eliminate Pain. The book includes liner notes from Bernie Siegel, MD, Adi Haramati, PhD, anesthesiology professor Jane Ballantyne, MD and this writer. This is Tick's second book.

Comment: I have the pleasure of working with Tick on the Integrative Pain Task Force of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care. This is what I shared on the jacket copy: "Dr. Tick's personal experience of chronic pain and her pioneering practi9ce of team-based integrative care make her the right voice and the right time, A compelling story-teller, she offers crisp communication on complex topics."

Greenlee: first ND president of SIO

Heather Greenlee, ND, PhD - first naturopathic president of the Society for Integrative Oncology

Integrative oncologist Heather Greenlee, ND, PhD is the first naturopathic physician to serve as the president of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO). Greenlee is an investigator with a long association with Columbia University whose research focuses on lifestyle issues in breast cancer modification and control. SIO, founded by Memorial Sloan Kettering's Barrie Cassileth, PhD, has had a remarkable mix of leaders, including a nurse practitioner, a BSc, and a PhD.  Notably, Greenlee's president-elect is another naturopathic physician who has been in long-time leadership both at SIO and the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, Suzanna Zick, ND, MPH,.