On the Front Lines
with John Weeks
Who is John Weeks?
John Weeks is a writer, speaker, chronicler and organizer whose work in the movement for integrative health and medicine began in 1983. He is publisher-editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports, which since 1995 – in various prior forms – has created primary connective terrain for the diverse stakeholders and professions in the field. He is a new contributor to Today’s Practitioner and contributes a regular column to Integrative Insights at Integrative Practitioner, a column for Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal, and regular blogs for the Altarum Institute, the Huffington Post and elsewhere. In May 2016, he accepted an invitation to serve as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Since mid-2015, John has re-focused his work on presenting, teaching and mentoring.
Big Duh People! Chiaramonte-Adler Guide a Special Issue Linking Integrative Care and Palliative Medicine
Sometimes synergies call for a solid moment of appreciation. In early 2019, Delia Chiaramonte, MD, an educator and integrative doctor who works in palliative medicine pinged me under my journal editor hat. How about a special issue of JACM-Paradigm Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health to highlight “integrative palliative care”? I liked the idea. I also knew that Chiaramonte, principally a clinician-educator, would be served to have a partner with more research experience. Two days later, Shelley Adler, PhD emailed me. The UCSF educator with fine research chops informed me she would be co-author on the next in a series
The VA’s Fast Track for Integrative Health from Evidence to Implementation: Reflections on a Special Issue of Medical Care
Tracking the inclusion of integrative strategies inside the Veteran’s Administration (VA) is an exception to the saying that a watched pot never boils. Integrative health research inside the VA funded in 2016 was the basis by which VA leaders chose 3 years later to more than triple the implementation of the “whole health” model to 55 medical centers. It was cause to exult. Now a special issue of the American Public Health Association journal Medical Care documents a further percolating of the inclusion process. With The Implementation of Complementary and Integrative Health Therapies in the Veterans Health Administration, one witnesses
Giving Trauma It’s Due in Education, Diagnostic, and Treatment Processes: The THEN Effort
Many years ago, an integrative colleague and adviser – my spouse! – explained something to me about an important part of her lengthy integrative intake process. The time is needed to build trust to have the patient divulge what is going on at the time a chronic condition set its hooks so that the freeing might commence. The past half-century was witnessed a slow, cultural recognition of the power of trauma in micro and macro ways. The “shell-shocked” of WWI became, post Vietnam, a potentially actionable PTSD. The women’s movement opened the lid on pervasive sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and
Evolving Incomes, Services and Clinical Foci of Naturopathic Practices: Musings on the Graduate Success and Compensation Study
Virtually every corner of the medical industry houses an entangling drama between mission and money. There is the service, the need to make a living, and then the way making a living can transform into a production orientation dominated by the impulse to make more money. For integrative health and medicine, the drama is intense, whether in integrative centers owned by large institutions or solo practices in the community. The mission-money challenges get “curiouser and curiouser” for the licensed integrative practice fields that are not fully swept up into the thundering $3.3 trillion river of cash that annually rips through
The Chopra Library at the Walton-Funded and Gaudet-Led Whole Health Institute: What’s the Plan?
If you ask Deepak Chopra about the purpose of the Chopra Library, he will turn quickly speak to the challenges at Wikipedia for topics like integrative medicine and well-being. “Our original intention,” Chopra recalls, “was to counter the agenda at Wikipedia that all this is not scientific.” The mission to provide quality, reliable evidence on integrative and consciousness science was supercharged this past year when word came out that Chopra’s library would become a department at the new Whole Health Institute (WHI). WHI and the library are each backed by philanthropist Alice Walton whose father Sam, the Walmart founder, recalls
In the George Floyd Moment: Removing the “O-Word” from Acupuncture and Eastern Medicine
At the time of the murder of George Floyd, members of his immediate family expressed amazement at the influence of his life through the manner of his death. They would not likely have guessed then that the social combustion over systemic racism and related colonial suppression would a month later prompt a community-wide consensus to remove a term that has been central to defining a core field in the integrative health and medicine space. An intense, open, and well-managed exchange has commenced among leaders of the profession of acupuncture and medicine from Eastern Asia to remove from their label a
John Weeks: “Mending Our History” – Acu-Detox Group Engages Its Black Panther and Young Lord Roots in the Time of George Floyd
The dominant origin story of the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) – known for their certified providers of the 5-point ear acupuncture protocol – begins with the association’s formation in 1985. It is a story featuring a remarkable white male medical doctor who was a breakthrough clinician in recognizing the value of group delivered services. Yet the development of the acupuncture protocol itself has an earlier, also powerful story. These origins are traced to a community health uprising in the South Bronx of New York in 1970. The action was led by the Black Panthers and the Nuyorican activist group,
The Path to a Virginia Medical Center’s COVID-19 Integrative Protocol Using Multiple Natural Agents: Interview with Paul Marik, MD
Editor’s Note: Soon after publication of this interview between John Weeks and Paul Marik, MD, FCCP, FCCM, Medscape published a commentary, Doctors Say Their COVID-19 Protocol Saves Lives. Others Want Proof. We recommend you read this along with the interview and give us your opinion. The polarization in US medicine has never been so front and center as it is with COVID-19. Natural agents are off the table. Despite early clarity that the state of the host matters big time in susceptibility to the virus, natural strategies focusing on host susceptibility are routinely denigrated and dismissed. So it was remarkable
U Vermont’s Multi-Stakeholder Integrative Pain Pilot: Initial Reflections on Outcomes & Transferability
In recent weeks, two influential integrative health organizations each chose to feature presentations on the expansive, multidisciplinary, and remarkably patient-choice integrative pain pilot associated with the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMC). The presentations for the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health and the Alliance to Advance Comprehensive Integrative Pain Management (AACIPM) featured the project’s remarkable, multi-stakeholder partners: the state’s dominant payer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Vermont Department of Health, and the academic medical center. Included in the latter was the project’s research leader, longtime integrative health policy activist and prior NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative
FTC’s Crackdown on COVID Claims: Insights on Novel Regulation from the Integrative Canaries in the Coal Mine
News feeds for the natural products and integrative health practitioner fields have in recent weeks included a drumbeat of alerts on actions of the Food and Trade Commission (FTC) on what the agency considers inappropriate COVID claims. A major natural health organization blasted the FTC’s efforts as practitioner gagging and censorship and is mounting a campaign to stop the activity. Others in these fields point to bullseyes some practitioners and companies have painted on their foreheads via gross over claims (“this mushroom will cure your COVID”) that laser-guide FTC’s actions. At a sober center amidst a tangle of issues –
Big Duh People! Chiaramonte-Adler Guide a Special Issue Linking Integrative Care and Palliative Medicine
Sometimes synergies call for a solid moment of appreciation. In early 2019, Delia Chiaramonte, MD, an educator and integrative doctor who works in palliative medicine pinged me under my journal editor hat. How about a special issue of JACM-Paradigm Practice and Policy Advancing Integrative Health to highlight “integrative palliative care”? I liked the idea. I also knew that Chiaramonte, principally a clinician-educator, would be served to have a partner with more research experience. Two days later, Shelley Adler, PhD emailed me. The UCSF educator with fine research chops informed me she would be co-author on the next in a series
The VA’s Fast Track for Integrative Health from Evidence to Implementation: Reflections on a Special Issue of Medical Care
Tracking the inclusion of integrative strategies inside the Veteran’s Administration (VA) is an exception to the saying that a watched pot never boils. Integrative health research inside the VA funded in 2016 was the basis by which VA leaders chose 3 years later to more than triple the implementation of the “whole health” model to 55 medical centers. It was cause to exult. Now a special issue of the American Public Health Association journal Medical Care documents a further percolating of the inclusion process. With The Implementation of Complementary and Integrative Health Therapies in the Veterans Health Administration, one witnesses
Giving Trauma It’s Due in Education, Diagnostic, and Treatment Processes: The THEN Effort
Many years ago, an integrative colleague and adviser – my spouse! – explained something to me about an important part of her lengthy integrative intake process. The time is needed to build trust to have the patient divulge what is going on at the time a chronic condition set its hooks so that the freeing might commence. The past half-century was witnessed a slow, cultural recognition of the power of trauma in micro and macro ways. The “shell-shocked” of WWI became, post Vietnam, a potentially actionable PTSD. The women’s movement opened the lid on pervasive sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and
Evolving Incomes, Services and Clinical Foci of Naturopathic Practices: Musings on the Graduate Success and Compensation Study
Virtually every corner of the medical industry houses an entangling drama between mission and money. There is the service, the need to make a living, and then the way making a living can transform into a production orientation dominated by the impulse to make more money. For integrative health and medicine, the drama is intense, whether in integrative centers owned by large institutions or solo practices in the community. The mission-money challenges get “curiouser and curiouser” for the licensed integrative practice fields that are not fully swept up into the thundering $3.3 trillion river of cash that annually rips through
The Chopra Library at the Walton-Funded and Gaudet-Led Whole Health Institute: What’s the Plan?
If you ask Deepak Chopra about the purpose of the Chopra Library, he will turn quickly speak to the challenges at Wikipedia for topics like integrative medicine and well-being. “Our original intention,” Chopra recalls, “was to counter the agenda at Wikipedia that all this is not scientific.” The mission to provide quality, reliable evidence on integrative and consciousness science was supercharged this past year when word came out that Chopra’s library would become a department at the new Whole Health Institute (WHI). WHI and the library are each backed by philanthropist Alice Walton whose father Sam, the Walmart founder, recalls
In the George Floyd Moment: Removing the “O-Word” from Acupuncture and Eastern Medicine
At the time of the murder of George Floyd, members of his immediate family expressed amazement at the influence of his life through the manner of his death. They would not likely have guessed then that the social combustion over systemic racism and related colonial suppression would a month later prompt a community-wide consensus to remove a term that has been central to defining a core field in the integrative health and medicine space. An intense, open, and well-managed exchange has commenced among leaders of the profession of acupuncture and medicine from Eastern Asia to remove from their label a
John Weeks: “Mending Our History” – Acu-Detox Group Engages Its Black Panther and Young Lord Roots in the Time of George Floyd
The dominant origin story of the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) – known for their certified providers of the 5-point ear acupuncture protocol – begins with the association’s formation in 1985. It is a story featuring a remarkable white male medical doctor who was a breakthrough clinician in recognizing the value of group delivered services. Yet the development of the acupuncture protocol itself has an earlier, also powerful story. These origins are traced to a community health uprising in the South Bronx of New York in 1970. The action was led by the Black Panthers and the Nuyorican activist group,
The Path to a Virginia Medical Center’s COVID-19 Integrative Protocol Using Multiple Natural Agents: Interview with Paul Marik, MD
Editor’s Note: Soon after publication of this interview between John Weeks and Paul Marik, MD, FCCP, FCCM, Medscape published a commentary, Doctors Say Their COVID-19 Protocol Saves Lives. Others Want Proof. We recommend you read this along with the interview and give us your opinion. The polarization in US medicine has never been so front and center as it is with COVID-19. Natural agents are off the table. Despite early clarity that the state of the host matters big time in susceptibility to the virus, natural strategies focusing on host susceptibility are routinely denigrated and dismissed. So it was remarkable
U Vermont’s Multi-Stakeholder Integrative Pain Pilot: Initial Reflections on Outcomes & Transferability
In recent weeks, two influential integrative health organizations each chose to feature presentations on the expansive, multidisciplinary, and remarkably patient-choice integrative pain pilot associated with the University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMC). The presentations for the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health and the Alliance to Advance Comprehensive Integrative Pain Management (AACIPM) featured the project’s remarkable, multi-stakeholder partners: the state’s dominant payer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Vermont Department of Health, and the academic medical center. Included in the latter was the project’s research leader, longtime integrative health policy activist and prior NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative
FTC’s Crackdown on COVID Claims: Insights on Novel Regulation from the Integrative Canaries in the Coal Mine
News feeds for the natural products and integrative health practitioner fields have in recent weeks included a drumbeat of alerts on actions of the Food and Trade Commission (FTC) on what the agency considers inappropriate COVID claims. A major natural health organization blasted the FTC’s efforts as practitioner gagging and censorship and is mounting a campaign to stop the activity. Others in these fields point to bullseyes some practitioners and companies have painted on their foreheads via gross over claims (“this mushroom will cure your COVID”) that laser-guide FTC’s actions. At a sober center amidst a tangle of issues –
Who is John Weeks?
John Weeks is a writer, speaker, chronicler and organizer whose work in the movement for integrative health and medicine began in 1983. He is publisher-editor of The Integrator Blog News & Reports, which since 1995 – in various prior forms – has created primary connective terrain for the diverse stakeholders and