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

On January 24, 2007, NIH Director, Elias A. Zerhouni, MD, named Josephine P. Briggs, MD, as the director designee of the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Briggs has expertise as a researcher. She's an NIH insider who ran a division at another institute. However, she has not evidently had any professional relationship to integrative medicine or complementary and alternative health care. For the second time, the NIH has saddled the $123-million Center with a greenhorn. Everyone with whom I speak asked that she be given time. I agree. I send this open letter to Dr. Briggs regarding her new responsibilities and what she might do to limit the adverse effects of this error of omission.
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Your Comments: 12 Voices on NIH Appointing, to Direct NCCAM, a Scientist Inexperienced in CAM

My open letter to Josephine Briggs, MD, who was appointed to direct the NIH NCCAM despite having virtually no experience in complementary or integrative medicine, produced a dozen, printable responses. Here are comments from Harvard Associate Professor Michael Cohen, JD, naturopathic medical leader Bruce Milliman, ND, Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium chair Sheila Quinn, holistic medicine pioneer Bill Manahan, MD, nurse-coach Linda Bark, RN, natural product consultant Michael Levin, publicist Rhonda Benfield, Georgetown law professor Sherman Cohn, JD, Kaiser Permanente physician Lydia Segal, MD, Healing Quest TV producer Judy Brooks and some who preferred to remain anonymous. This piece concludes with an excellent report from CAM entrepreneur Taylor Walsh on Briggs' comments at her first NCCAM meeting, February 1, 2008.
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IH NCCAM Responds to Integrator Open Letter Regarding Briggs Inexperience

The Integrator Open Letter to NIH NCCAM's incoming director, Josephine Briggs, MD, stimulated many comments. Many asked me to share any response from Dr. Briggs. On February 9, a response arrived, not from Briggs, but from NCCAM's public liaison, Chris Thomsen. The letter references Briggs' perceptions and plans relative to her taking over a position of tremendous influence for the field despite having no background in complementary or integrative medicine. Here is the letter, some musing on hope, and on colonization.
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IHPM Conference to Cross-Fertilize Employer and Integrative Health Care: March 31-April 2, Orlando

Are you a clinician, researcher, integrative clinic leader, CAM network manager or professional association leader who wishes a crash course on employer-think to explore an d network possible relationships with employers? Are you an employer, union leader or government manager who is curious about how complementary, alternative and integrative medicine (CAIM) might enhance the health and productivity of your work force or members? If so, the March 31-April 2, 2008 meeting of the Institute for Health and Productivity Management offers an exceptional immersion for both stakeholders. Cathy Baase, MD. corporate medical director for Dow Chemical and I will be co-moderating an interactive, CAIM track at the state of the art of development. Take a look at what we've assembled.
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CAM Educators Respond to MD-Created "Competencies for Integrative Medicine"

Running into a buzz saw. That may be the best description of what happened to the MD-led integrative medicine educators when they told some CAM educators that they were about to publish an articles in Academic Medicine on competencies in integrative medicine. The CAM educators, organized now as the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care, decided to conduct a formal, researched response which was published this fall in Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Here is a short report on a complex exchange between these educators, plus a response from Ben Kligler, MD, lead author of the Academic Medicine article.
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Resources

Integrator Archive by Subject for January-June 2007
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Integrator Archive by Subject for 2006: All Hot-linked
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