Making Friends with Google’s Algorithm for your Health-Provider Website
From 2018 to 2019, Google made significant changes in its algorithm that affect health-provider websites. As is reported in John Week’s column on the subject, some alternative and integrative websites were hit pretty hard by the new rules. To help you with your practice’s marketing efforts, we’ve compiled some digital

Fascinating! Group Visits May Outperform (Already Positive) Individual Outcomes at Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine
Is it possible that group visits can outperform individual visits in patient reported outcomes? The audience for an energetic panel discussion that touched on group visits at the February 2019 Integrative Healthcare Symposium heard an intriguing – though yet premature – data point. Panelist Mark Hyman MD noted that the

The Integrative Health Business: ‘Administrators’ Versus ‘Builders’
I often see integrative and functional medicine business and organization leaders smothered from the weight of managing day-to-day operations: process and repetitive tasks allow neither adequate time nor sufficient resources to deal with strategic business development and execution. Rare are the super-competent administrators or business owners who are as savvy

Integrative Oncology: Making Appropriate Choices While Changing the Culture
By Santosh Rao, MD / I find it difficult to truly define integrative oncology. Statements about how we look after the “whole person”, pay attention to lifestyle and stress or even spirituality seem ambiguous and incomplete. All caregivers pay attention to these things, perhaps some more than others, but is

Intentions: A Major Source of Outcomes as Integrative Health Leaders
By Bonnie Horrigan / As we engage in mindfulness meditation, or in other inward-looking practices such as self-reflection or contemplative prayer, we gradually become aware of the deeper aspects of ourselves and how those aspects affect the reality in which we live. One of those aspects — our intentions —

Living and Leading with Resilience, by Adam Perlman, MD
By Adam Perlman, MD, MPH / Leaders in healthcare, as in all industries, have the responsibility to support employees’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being. This support can take many forms, but there is one challenge in particular that affects every corner of the workforce: stress. The Centers for Disease Control

Inside Look at Establishing an Integrative Health and Wellbeing Program
Editor’s Note: The following is from Alka Gupta, MD, and Chiti Parikh, MD, Co-Directors, Integrative Health and Wellbeing, New York-Presbyterian and Alumni of the Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare at Duke University. Gupta and Parikh take readers through their plans, from inception to completion, to create an integrative healthcare program

College Students’ Familiarity with CAM Supplements
With parents administering medicinal herbs to children as a preventive alternative to traditional drugs, the research team thought it would be interesting to assess the use of these products during the transition into adulthood through college life. The purpose of this study was to research college students’ perceptions of, familiarity with, and knowledge of herbal supplements in health promotion. Alternative Therapies, Vol. 18, No. 5 by by Caitlyn Zimmerman; Jay Kandiah, PhD, RD, CD

Can You Hear Me Now? Improving Practitioner-Patient Communication
One of the most useful tools in your medical kit isn’t the latest pharmaceutical, supplement or integrative therapy, it’s patient communication. A recent small study highlighted that when it comes to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), Americans report widespread interest and usage (30-53%% for adults, 12% children), but too often

Balancing Priorities and Relationships as Integrative Healthcare Providers, with Adam Perlman, MD
Relationships, priorities, and a life worth living when serving as a physician Essay by Adam Perlman, MD, MPH, Director of the Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare at Duke University. Relationships are a key component to success — and sometimes failure — not only on the job but also in one’s

Medical Words of the Year: Mindfulness in Medicine
Surreal is Webster’s Dictionary 2016 word of the year. From the Brussels and Paris attacks to the election, emotions were high and answers didn’t come easily. And, as we enter into a new year, the status of healthcare in American remains a bit of a mystery. If it were possible

Want Dynamic Leadership? Find a Partner
By Bonnie Horrigan When conceptualizing the Leadership Program for Integrative Healthcare at Duke, a group of us were brainstorming what might make a leader in an integrative clinic different from a leader in a conventional healthcare setting. We looked at the principles involved in integrative care and asked ourselves: Could

PART II Integrative Leadership: An Embodied Mechanism for Transformation
By Lori Knutson, RN, BSN In integrative clinical practice we hold that the relationship we have with our patient may be more powerful in the healing process than any one intervention. This is true in Integrative Leadership. Relationship is the key to the embodiment of wholeness and the transformation of

PART I Integrative Leadership: An Embodied Practice
by Lori Knutson, RN, BSN / Integrative leadership is becoming a social imperative, especially when you consider the elements of Integrative Leadership in the following way: Integrative: “Serving or intending to unify separate things” Leadership: “Going before or with to show the way” Those of us who have been in

Income and Education Linked to Non Use of CAM Therapies
Education and income are tied to reduced awareness and use of alternative medical options, say researchers from San Francisco State University. According to the research led by Adam Burke, professor of Health Education, practices like yoga, acupuncture, natural products and chiropractic medicine are less likely to be pursued among people