IHPC/AIHM Joint Letter to National Academy of Medicine

IHPC and AIHM encourage the new National Academy of Medicine to embed integrative practitioners into its important initiatives such as Healthy America, and Grand Challenges in Health and Medicine.

In a joint letter of mid-August signed by board members of both organizations including IHPC chair Len Wisneski, MD and AIHM President Mimi Guarneri, MD, the two organizations emphasized the importance of including the practitioners who are making integrative health and medicine a staple in US healthcare. They write:

“Integrative Health and Medicine offers a comprehensive prevention-based approach
to effectively treat chronic disease and enhance health promotion, embracing a
multi-disciplinary team of licensed healthcare providers working at the highest level
of their scope of practice.”

 
 
The letter was written in response to a request from the new National Academy of Medicine (the former Institute of Medicine) for recommended topics for its series of “Perspectives” that are contributed by outside experts and organizations. You can see the current list of these contributions here.

Among the topics recommended for NAM Perspectives in the joint letter:

• Inter-professional Education and Collaboration, including the introduction to complementary and integrative health courses in medical school curricula
• Non-Discrimination in Healthcare (Affordable Care Act Section 2706) and working with state advocates and officials and federal agencies to enforce this law
• Improving research methodologies at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) to ensure the best outcomes for investigations into complementary and integrative health topics
• The role that several integrative health disciplines play in primary care
• Traditional World Medicines
• Integrative pain management and the over-prescribing of narcotic and psychoactive drugs
• The transition to a patient-centered or “relationship based care” models