Integrator Blog News & Reports

Integration, by nature, asks us to open our peripheral visions. We are served to look at the whole of the field. We need to develop new fascia, new connectivity. Opportunities crop up in new places. The Integrator Blog News and Reports is meant to provide you with information, insights and tools to enhance integrated care in the environment you serve. - John Weeks, publisher-editor

The Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC) and Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC) recently alerted the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) that they are significantly out of compliance on a key Congressional mandate. NCCAM's advisory council is mandated to include among its members at least 50% who are licensed in CAM disciplines plus 3 consumer members. The current council has just 27% of its members from chiropractic, acupuncture and Oriental medicine. naturopathic medicine and massage therapy. None are consumer representatives. Since alerting top NCCAM officials of concerns about the situation, ACCAHC and IHPC have since received assurances that NCCAM will work promptly to meet the requirements of the law.
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A recent article in Medscape General Medicine suggests that when author Dan Brown gets tired of pulling off the veils of the Vatican he might spend a little time unwinding the political-economic machinations and special understandings that shape what the Cochrane Collaboration sees fit to publish. The article, by physician-author David Cundiff, MD, is entitled "Evidence-based Medicine and the Cochrane Collaboration on Trial." Cundiff concludes: "While evidence-based medicine is absolutely essential to comprehensive healthcare reform, it has been profoundly corrupted by money."
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So what do people in the integrated care community think about Sicko, Michael Moore's documentary on the US medical madness? The Integrator invited your comments and reviews - and still does. Eric Goldman, the New York-based editor of Holistic Primary Care was the first to respond, thoughtfully and at length. I attach comments up front from Integrator advisor Milt Hammerly, MD, director of medical operations and integrative medicine for Catholic Health Initiatives, a multi-state health system; Tom Ballard, ND, a clinician with 25 years of practice; Marc Diener, a Hollywood lawyer and activist with the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium, and Kathleen O'Connor, journalist and executive director of the citizen's healthcare reform organization Code Blue Now! Then, the main course of Goldman's column, in which he compares Moore's approach to that other major recent documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Enjoy!
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Julie Gerberding, MD, has stepped out of the box of the health reform debate. Gerberding believes that true reform of the US medical system requires us to establish "schools of health" in which professionals start their education together. The paradigm shift will foster cooperation and a sense of common mission. While not referring directly to the complementary and alternative professions, Gerberding's vision is deeply aligned with recommendations in a 2005 National Education Dialogue report from educators representing 12 complementary and alternative healthcare and integrative medicine disciplines. These pushes for multi-disciplinary collaboration also echo recommendations from the Institute of Medicine in its report on CAM in the United States. An Integrator reader urges a campaign to urge Gerberding to continue to promote this direction to limit turf wars wars."
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