Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care
Exploring Integrative Definitions and Depth of Interprofessional Experience
The Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC) continues exploration of key components of integration and their impact on the training and practice of integrative health and medicine (IHM) professionals.
ACCAHC assistant director Beth Rosenthal, PhD, MBA, MPH, and clinical working group member Anthony Lisi, DC, are conducting a series of projects exploring definitions, educational components, and practice applications of IHM and interprofessional collaboration. Their work is supported by the Leo S. Guthman Fund.
The first project, published in Topics in Integrative Health Care (TIHC), was a qualitative assessment of English language definitions of select IHM-related terms. This work explored the usage and context of terms occurring in definitions of IHM published by those groups hypothesized to have the greatest current impact. Eleven themes emerged, encompassing elements such as inclusion of distinct disciplines, combination of CAM and conventional medicine, evidence-based practice, and health determinants. The work suggested that items included in or omitted from given definitions can have implications for interprofessional education and practice. The article (available at http://www.tihcij.com/Articles/A-Qualitative-Analysis-of-Various-Definitions-of-Integrative-Medicine-and-Health.aspx?id=0000441) points to the importance of using the word discipline or profession as opposed to modality: “Using the terms modality-therapy-intervention-treatment rather than the terms professional or discipline discounts the importance of delivering the modality-therapy-intervention-treatment in context of its discipline, by practitioners who are educated and trained in the discipline. Leaving disciplines and health professionals out of the definition effectively leaves out the rich experience and context of the discipline, and de-values interprofessionalism.”
The team's second effort for ACCAHC was a survey of academic institutions in the 5 ACCAHC member IHM disciplines: acupuncture and Oriental medicine, chiropractic care, direct entry midwifery, massage therapy, and naturopathic medicine. This work, currently accepted for publication in TIHC, queried the schools' clinical education administrators to assess the degree of interprofessional education occurring in the clinical training of the given profession's students. One hundred sixty-one schools were invited to participate in an electronic survey, and 88 (66% response rate) provided information on interprofessional interactions occurring in their students' clinical training. As expected, there was much variation across and within disciplines, with schools housing programs of more than one profession more likely to report a high frequency of interprofessional education than their single-discipline counterparts.
Lastly, an ongoing ACCAHC project by Rosenthal and Lisi seeks to examine the facilitators and barriers to interprofessional collaboration among the private practice clinicians in the 5 above-mentioned disciplines. This work will assess private practice providers—rather than those already included in interdisciplinary facilities—as these types of providers deliver the majority of their discipline's respective services to patients in the United States. The work will also investigate the extent to which these disciplines are participating in community healthcare to under-served populations.
Submitted by: Beth Rosenthal, PhD, MBA, MPH, ACCAHC assistant director, and Anthony Lisi, DC, ACCAHC clinical working group member
Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health
The Consortium, an organization devoted to advancing the principles of integrative medicine and health within academic institutions, has recently changed its name from the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integra tive Medicine to the Academic Consortium for Inte grative Medicine & Health. In addition to providing its 60 institutional members with a community of support for the academic missions, the Consortium is interested in strengthening its partnerships with other organizations to advance integrative healthcare.
The Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine (AzCIM) and the Consortium in cooperation with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) created the National Center for Integrative Primary Healthcare (NCIPH). Interprofessional integrative health competencies have been developed to guide the creation of a 45-hour interprofessional integrative health online curriculum, “Foundations in Integrative Health,” for primary care educational programs. The curriculum content will address gaps in integrative health knowledge and skills. The course will be available online free of charge to primary care education programs during the grant period. There will be a built-in evaluation of knowledge and competencies in integrative health and interprofessional collaboration. Interested in becoming a pilot site to test and evaluate the curriculum? Please email info@nciph.org. Be part of the future!
This month, the Consortium's annual meeting will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and will be hosted by Judy Balk, MD, MPH, FACOG, of Temple University and Ron Glick, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh. The planning committee is led by Rob Saper, MD, MPH, and also includes Carol Greco, MD; Maryanna Klatt, PhD; and Margaret Chesney, PhD. During the meeting, the Consortium's Bravewell Distinguished Service Award will be presented. This award is given to an individual from a member institution for his or her exceptional contribution to the Consortium's mission. This year's award will be presented to James Dalen, MD, MPH, who in addition to being instrumental in the founding of the Consortium is the former dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine and currently serves as the executive director of the Weil Foundation, Tucson, Arizona. The Bravewell Lecture will be presented by Karen Feinstein, PhD, president and chief executive officer of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and founder of the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative.
May 17-20, 2016, in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Consortium will sponsor the International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health in cooperation with the International Society on Complementary Medicine, the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium, the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Healthcare, and the Academy of Integrative Medicine & Health.
For more information about the Consortium, please visit www.imconsortium.org.
Submitted by: Margaret Chesney, PhD, chair, Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health
Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine
The Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine (AIHM) focuses on forming partnerships and relationships with US and global organizations and associations while creating support systems and member benefits for a growing base of healthcare practitioner–members and community health-seekers.
In February, AIHM board member Len Wisneski, MD, FACP, reconvened a group of more than 3 dozen representatives of interdisciplinary healthcare practitioner associations along with educational institutions and continuing-education nonprofits. The organizational representatives, who had convened October 25, 2014, in San Diego, California, and volunteered to serve as an AIHM association advisory task force, will create an AIHM Association Membership Program, creating and defining benefits and identifying priorities and goals to organize around and work on for the benefit of all member associations. In addition to Dr Wisneski, AIHM's interdisciplinary association leadership council includes Pamela Snider, ND; David Riley, MD; Bill Reddy, LAc; Jeannie Kang, LAc; and Global Advances in Health and Medicine contributor John Weeks.
Molly Roberts, MD, past American Holistic Medical Association president and current AIHM board member, is leading a practitioner member leadership council to develop new member benefits and discounts, which, notably, include access to Global Advances in Health and Medicine. The academy's membership jumped to several thousand following its founding as active American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine diplomates were afforded membership privileges for a trial period.
For more information about AIHM, please visit http://aihm.org.
Submitted by: Steve Cadwell, co–executive director, AIHM
Australian Research Centre in Complementary and Integrative Medicine
The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA) special interest group (SIG) in “Evidence, Research and Policy in Complementary Medicine” has been extending its international influence and collaborations over the past few months. In late February 2015, key members of the SIG executive committee conducted a workshop on the “Critical Public Health of Traditional and Complementary Medicine” at the 14th World Congress on Public Health organized by the World Federation of Public Health Associations (WFPHA) and sponsored by the World Health Organization, among others. The workshop, attended by more than 50 delegates from 9 countries and facilitated by Professor Jon Adams (national convenor, SIG); Amie Steel, ND; and Jon Wardle, ND; introduced a number of key features of a strong public health research program in traditional and complementary medicine and healthcare. Participants were also encouraged to explore the application of a critical public health in considering and analyzing informal healthcare and medical systems in their local contexts.
The Australian Research Centre in Complementary and Integrative Medicine (ARCCIM) is pleased to announce 2 exciting capacity-building successes. ARCCIM Director Adams took up a new government research fellowship in April 2015. Prof Adams was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Professorial Future Fellowship for 4 years (2015-2019). The fellowship, worth a total of $1.2 million (Australian), will enable him to undertake critical public health research examining complementary and alternative medicine self-care for older adults living with chronic illness. Meanwhile, Dr Wardle, a postdoctoral research fellow at ARCCIM, was recently awarded a continuing full-time lectureship with ARCCIM. The lectureship will enable Dr Wardle to further his extensive research portfolio around policy, legal, and regulatory issues in CAM as well as contribute key CAM course development to the faculty's newly developed master's programs.
Submitted by: Jon Adams, Professor of Public Health and director, ARCCIM
Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium
The Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC) has published a 16-page booklet, Integrative Health and Medicine: Today's Answer to Affordable Healthcare; Health Creation Economics. The booklet was created to dispel the myth that integrative healthcare is too expensive and burdensome for insurance companies to take on. The audience for the booklet includes insurance commissioners and executives, legislators, and policy makers. The booklet incorporates not only the latest data in support of integrative care but also patient stories and quotes. The subsections of the booklet include health and disease, health creation, prevention, therapeutic order, wellness in the work-place, caring for the whole person, cost savings, and a call to action. Compelling data regarding various aspects of treatment and positive health outcomes related to acu-puncture, chiropractic care, naturopathic care, midwifery, holistic nursing, massage therapy, and homeopathy as well as team care are heavily cited.
Written by an expert team of researchers and providers—Erica Oberg, ND MPH; Mimi Guarneri, MD, FACC; and Patricia Herman, ND, MPH, PhD—with patient stories contributed by Taylor Walsh, the publication is a key component of the integrative health advocacy toolkit. IHPC's board members and Partner for Health organizations will be using the booklet for multiple educational and advocacy purposes.
To paraphrase from the opening 2-page letter (signed by Drs Guarneri and Oberg and Len Wisneski, MD, FACP), “Integrative health and medicine offers a comprehensive prevention-based approach to effectively treat chronic disease and enhance health promotion… and embraces a multidisciplinary team of licensed health-care providers working at the highest level of their scope of practice. There is no need to ‘discover’ a new model of care through statistical algorithms. Patients who work with integrative health and medicine practitioners are already achieving the triple aim: They (1) are healthier, (2) have lower healthcare costs, and (3) report extremely high levels of patient satisfaction. Through a collaborative approach to healthcare, integrative health-care solutions contribute to the triple aim of healthcare every day. How? This publication… explores 4 interrelated ways in which the contributions of these licensed health professionals reduce health-care costs: (1) get people healthier to prevent big-ticket chronic disease; 2) create better outcomes, especially in those who are chronically ill; (3) keep costs low by keeping care simple and adhering to a common-sense therapeutic order; and (4) reduce costs up front through complementary, alternative, and integrative therapies.”
For more information about the booklet, please contact IHPC at (202) 505-IHPC (4472).
Submitted by: Alyssa Wostrel, MBA, executive director, IHPC