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

Integrative medicine is producing its second wave of leaders. Among these is David Rakel, MD. Rakel is a board member of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, an executive committee member of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine and editor of the 1300 page tome Integrative Medicine. The Integrator spoke with Rakel recently about the movement, and his day job, at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, where his focus is on a new model of family medicine. More ...
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Columnist Michael Levin: Deloitte Survey of Health Consumers Offers Insights for Integrative Medicine

Integrator columnist Michael Levin shares intriguing outcomes of a healthcare survey from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. The authors examine opinions and practices of over 3000 consumers, identifying use of alternative healthcare services as a key identifier of behavior across a series of consumer types. The six types range from "content and compliant" to "out and about" (the most significant alt-med users) to "shop and save." Current complementary medicine use represents a fraction of the openness expressed by these consumers. Paul Keckley, PhD, co-author and director of the Center was formerly the head of integrative medicine planning for Vanderbilt University. Levin is correct: there is much here to ponder about integrative care and the changing nature of the healthcare consumer. More ...
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Herb, Nutrient and Drug Interactions: Multi-Disciplinary Team Plots Course Out of Paranoia

Dialogue over the integration of herbs and nutrients into clinical practice has focused on potentially negative impacts on the value of prescribed pharmaceuticals. Missing has been a view which respects these concerns, but which puts the patient, rather than the pharmaceutical regime, in the center of clinical concern. The recently published 930 page Herb, Nutrient, and Drug Interactions: Clinical Implications and Therapeutic Strategies (Stargrove, McKee, Treasure) offers a measured walk for clinicians which Tieraona Lowdog, MD, chair of the US Pharmacopoeia Dietary Supplements Information Committee calls, in a forward, "appropriate balance between recommendation and risk based on the overall strength of the scientific evidence and their own clinical experience." More ...
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Notes on Integrative Care and Health & Productivity Management from the Employer-Focused IHPM Conference

From March 31-April 2, 2008, an unusual cross-disciplinary group of complementary, alternative and integrative medicine (CAIM) practitioners and researchers gathered with a much larger group of employer organizations at the Institute for Health and Productivity Management's Fourth Annual Health Management Conference. The conference was entitled The Employer-Sponsored Value-Based Health System: New Key to Global Competitiveness. The questions on the table were whether and how CAIM practices might be useful to an employer’s cost-conscious health and productivity agenda, and, if so, were the two parties ready to take advantage of the opportunity presented. This reports some of that meeting. Next conference: Oct. 15-17, Scottsdale. More ...
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Content from May issue…

Bravo! Canadian-British Team Brings Research Home with Launch of the IN-CAM Outcomes Database

Bravo to Marja Verhoef, PhD and her team with the Canadian Interdisciplinary Network for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research (IN-CAM)! On March 31, 2008, IN-CAM unveiled the IN-CAM Outcomes Database. The project, funded through the Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation, brings together a huge set of instruments with which practitioners and researchers can explore their outcomes. While one might quibble with the non-inclusion of presenteeism and economic indicators, this database should become the center of the universe for the most productive research in complementary and integrative medicine. Ever wonder why it is leaders from Canada and not the United States who have taken the lead in this work? More ...
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Academic Advances: AMSA & NMSA, SPARC, UCLA, Harvard, NUHS, NIH-Yoga, Yale, NYCC, New Consortium Members, plus

Breakthrough: American Medical Student Association formally recognizes the Naturopathic Medical Student Association as an affiliate ... Fønnebø to propose "peace treaty" in "research battleground" at May 18 SPARC meeting ... Harvard integrative clinic featured ... UCLA program offers seven approaches to back pain in consumer-focused event ... Formerly chiropractic-only schools gain recognition for AOM and ND programs ... Yale's kick-off event draws overflow crowd ... NIH to have May Yoga week ... U Mass natural products Master's degree now largely internet-based ... BU and Northwestern Feinberg bring to 41 the members of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine ... Master's in Integrative Health in development for 2008 at National University, San Diego. More ...
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Columnist Michael Levin: Opportunities for Integrative Medicine in a Recent AARP Report on Drug Price Escalation

Integrator columnist Michael Levin, founder of Health Business Strategies, is a long-time promoter of integrative medicine strategies that challenge the often costly, unsafe and quality of life damaging interventions promoted by Big Pharma. So when Levin, who has been an executive with both Pharma and dietary supplement firms, saw the new AARP report on drug price trends pre and post the implementation of the Medicare Drug Benefit, he analyzed it both for what Pharma had already extracted, and for what integrative medicine might. Here is Levin's brief report and view of opportunities. More ...
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After Obama's Talk on Race - Reflections on Parallels in Healthcare Integration

[From my Integrative Practitioner Online column] "I have always viewed work in healthcare “integration” as deeply akin to the effort to racially integrate the culture we inhabit. So I was riveted when Barack Obama addressed the nation with a speech which was, as the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart put it, the first time “a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race, as though they were adults.” I listened as a child of parents who took me on Open Housing marches in Seattle 45 years ago. I also listened from within my 25 years of involvement with thousands of you in the plodding advancement of the “integration” of health care disciplines and practices. The parallels are profound. Between the dominant school of medicine and any healing-oriented, whole person approach, there exists a huge cultural and economic chasm." More ...
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Chiropractors in the Nation's Largest Health System: Anthony Lisi, DC on Integration into Veterans Health Facilities

When Yale University School of Medicine recently chose to bring a chiropractor into their first Integrative Medicine Symposium, Anthony Lisi, DC was the chosen presenter. As director of the Veterans Health Administration's Chiropractic Service, Lisi sits in the hot-seat for the most significant complementary and alternative healthcare integration effort nationwide. To Lisi's account, practitioner-to-practitioner relationships and patient reports are overcoming the deep reluctance with which most of the VA's medical directors greeted this Congressionally-mandated program. The Integrator caught up with Lisi to learn more about this pioneering initiative. More ...
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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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