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.
Huge Loss to US Pain Policy: Academy of Integrative Pain Management Shuts Down
For the past half decade, the Academy of Integrative Pain Management (AIPM) has carried the policy mantle for integrative pain treatment into ever more influential places. The beacons were the 2017 and 2018 Integrative Pain Care Policy Congress. The most recent convened 70 stakeholder organizations, including key payers and federal agencies. On January 29, 2019, AIPM announced that it has ceased operations. Amidst the present opportunities for transforming pain treatment, the integrative pain field lost its engine. Oddly, the very challenges to the pharma industry in the center of the dominant pain model were part of AIPM’s undoing. (See more
Integrative Psychiatrist Scott Shannon, MD: The Phase III MDMA Trial and the Transformation of Psychotherapy
Author Michael Pollan’s powerful 2015 New Yorker essay “The Trip Treatment” suggested that a book was coming, as it did with last year’s best seller: How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence. Pollan’s essay also suggested that a companion book might be needed: How to Change the Psychotherapy Industry. Long-term value from 1-3 doses of these agents presents its challenges for both the manufacturers of competing pharmaceuticals and also for clinicians accustomed to banking on long-term treatment processes. So when I learned that integrative psychiatrist Scott Shannon,
Coming of the Light: The 2018 Integrator Top 10 for Policy and Action in Integrative Health and Medicine
The Integrator Blog News & Reports – now published via johnweeks-integrator.com (with content going back to 2006 at the original Integrator site) – annually marks the winter solstice with a Top 10 for Policy and Action in Integrative Health and Medicine. In the selection of each in the Top 10, “the accent” – as the jazzman sings – “is on the affirmative.” Thus the coming of the light from individuals and organizations in the field making positive contributions to shift the medical industry toward a system that focuses on creating health. The Top 10 lists for 2006-2014 are here, for
Portrait of a Medical Cannabis Clinical Practice: Shaping the Road Ahead
In May of 2018 at the top global research meeting for integrative health and medicine, two academic leaders with medical cannabis practices organized an informal breakfast round-table. One co-convenor helping guide dialogue in the overflow room was Leslie Mendoza Temple, MD. The past chair of the politically-killed Illinois Medical Cannabis Advisory Board brought more than personal reflection to the attendees. Temple had performed a comprehensive chart review on the first 166 medical cannabis patients certified in the practice. Her findings, recently published, and her reflections on now 650 patients – plus the curious politics of cannabis in her state –
Two Real World Illuminations of Patients’ Experience of Healing and Health
Organizations connected to two of the most significant researchers in the movement for integrative healing and health, Brian Berman, MD and Wayne Jonas, MD, held separate events recently to announce reports that offer insight into patients’ experience of healing and health. Samueli Integrative Health Programs, which Jonas directs, examined patient views of health in the context of their relationships with their primary care doctors. Berman’s Institute for Health and Healing – in collaboration with the Institute for Functional Medicine – dove deeply into selected patients’ perceptions of what their “healing journey” to develop a model. Both examinations highlight processes not
FDA Violates Core Principles in Removing Natural Agents from Compounding Pharmacists
The principle of using the least invasive methods first – a corollary of “first do no harm” – is central to integrative health and medicine. Also core is the idea of patient-centered, functionally-oriented outcomes. Each of these principles is being chucked out the window as the FDA is systematically removing multiple natural agents from an approved list for compounding pharmacists. This regulatory abuse emerged during an October 30, 2018 webinar from integrative practice attorney Alan Dumoff, JD, MSW. In the presentation, sponsored through the United Natural Products Alliance (UNPA), Dumoff informed UNPA members about a multi-year engagement to protect clinician
Paradigm Shift? Harvard Medical School Considering Mission Reframe from Sickness Model to Health
On September 26, 2018, Harvard Medical School announced to its faculty that it is “reassessing” the School’s mission statement. An invitation to comment and provide feedback on a draft of a new mission was sent by microbiology and immunology professor Peter Howley, MD. Howley leads a committee for Medical School Dean George Daley, MD, PhD that is wrestling with a transformational theme that most unifies the diverse parties in the movement for integrative health and medicine. Harvard is bellying up toward reckoning with the need to shift the medical industry toward a system for creating health. The current HMS mission
A Natural Partner: Integrative Health Advances at the American Congress for Rehabilitative Medicine
The evolution of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) began in the 1930s with a founding focus on a single emerging modality and now boasts a position as the largest multidisciplinary-centered rehabilitation organization in the country. ACRM was first a medical academy for x-ray therapy, broadened to more physical therapies, then focused in on physical medicine, and finally extended outward again to address both physical and psychological issues. Core disciplines are medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and psychology. The door is not shut. Anyone can join. Now a subset of the heterogeneous organization’s membership is casting a broader net.
Inclusion Check-in: Are Integrative Practices in New Federal Opioid Legislation, National Academy, and FDA Activity?
One can easily count the chickens of non-pharmacological approaches highlighted in multiple organizational guidelines and state strategies related to pain and opioids. But one definitely cannot count on them hatching inside each new, significant policy initiative. Regular medicine tends to regress toward a non-inclusive mean in pain treatment. And “mean” may be the operative word – at least from the perspective of individuals who remain unaware of the integrative therapies and practitioners that may help them. This is an irregular Integrator look at the level of inclusion in recent major initiatives related to pain and opioids. To start, the federal
Helene Langevin MD, CM to Provide New Integrative Leadership at NIH: What Can We Expect?
In early 2008, the leadership of the National Institutes of Health for the second time caused concern among many in the integrative health and medicine field by naming a director of what is the now National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) who had zero experience in the field the director was to oversee. Imagine a head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute with no experience in any cardiology, pulmunology or hematology. The first was Stephen Straus, MD, a hard-line NIH lifer who never tried nor apparently was interested in experiencing any of the complementary or alternative
Huge Loss to US Pain Policy: Academy of Integrative Pain Management Shuts Down
For the past half decade, the Academy of Integrative Pain Management (AIPM) has carried the policy mantle for integrative pain treatment into ever more influential places. The beacons were the 2017 and 2018 Integrative Pain Care Policy Congress. The most recent convened 70 stakeholder organizations, including key payers and federal agencies. On January 29, 2019, AIPM announced that it has ceased operations. Amidst the present opportunities for transforming pain treatment, the integrative pain field lost its engine. Oddly, the very challenges to the pharma industry in the center of the dominant pain model were part of AIPM’s undoing. (See more
Integrative Psychiatrist Scott Shannon, MD: The Phase III MDMA Trial and the Transformation of Psychotherapy
Author Michael Pollan’s powerful 2015 New Yorker essay “The Trip Treatment” suggested that a book was coming, as it did with last year’s best seller: How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence. Pollan’s essay also suggested that a companion book might be needed: How to Change the Psychotherapy Industry. Long-term value from 1-3 doses of these agents presents its challenges for both the manufacturers of competing pharmaceuticals and also for clinicians accustomed to banking on long-term treatment processes. So when I learned that integrative psychiatrist Scott Shannon,
Coming of the Light: The 2018 Integrator Top 10 for Policy and Action in Integrative Health and Medicine
The Integrator Blog News & Reports – now published via johnweeks-integrator.com (with content going back to 2006 at the original Integrator site) – annually marks the winter solstice with a Top 10 for Policy and Action in Integrative Health and Medicine. In the selection of each in the Top 10, “the accent” – as the jazzman sings – “is on the affirmative.” Thus the coming of the light from individuals and organizations in the field making positive contributions to shift the medical industry toward a system that focuses on creating health. The Top 10 lists for 2006-2014 are here, for
Portrait of a Medical Cannabis Clinical Practice: Shaping the Road Ahead
In May of 2018 at the top global research meeting for integrative health and medicine, two academic leaders with medical cannabis practices organized an informal breakfast round-table. One co-convenor helping guide dialogue in the overflow room was Leslie Mendoza Temple, MD. The past chair of the politically-killed Illinois Medical Cannabis Advisory Board brought more than personal reflection to the attendees. Temple had performed a comprehensive chart review on the first 166 medical cannabis patients certified in the practice. Her findings, recently published, and her reflections on now 650 patients – plus the curious politics of cannabis in her state –
Two Real World Illuminations of Patients’ Experience of Healing and Health
Organizations connected to two of the most significant researchers in the movement for integrative healing and health, Brian Berman, MD and Wayne Jonas, MD, held separate events recently to announce reports that offer insight into patients’ experience of healing and health. Samueli Integrative Health Programs, which Jonas directs, examined patient views of health in the context of their relationships with their primary care doctors. Berman’s Institute for Health and Healing – in collaboration with the Institute for Functional Medicine – dove deeply into selected patients’ perceptions of what their “healing journey” to develop a model. Both examinations highlight processes not
FDA Violates Core Principles in Removing Natural Agents from Compounding Pharmacists
The principle of using the least invasive methods first – a corollary of “first do no harm” – is central to integrative health and medicine. Also core is the idea of patient-centered, functionally-oriented outcomes. Each of these principles is being chucked out the window as the FDA is systematically removing multiple natural agents from an approved list for compounding pharmacists. This regulatory abuse emerged during an October 30, 2018 webinar from integrative practice attorney Alan Dumoff, JD, MSW. In the presentation, sponsored through the United Natural Products Alliance (UNPA), Dumoff informed UNPA members about a multi-year engagement to protect clinician
Paradigm Shift? Harvard Medical School Considering Mission Reframe from Sickness Model to Health
On September 26, 2018, Harvard Medical School announced to its faculty that it is “reassessing” the School’s mission statement. An invitation to comment and provide feedback on a draft of a new mission was sent by microbiology and immunology professor Peter Howley, MD. Howley leads a committee for Medical School Dean George Daley, MD, PhD that is wrestling with a transformational theme that most unifies the diverse parties in the movement for integrative health and medicine. Harvard is bellying up toward reckoning with the need to shift the medical industry toward a system for creating health. The current HMS mission
A Natural Partner: Integrative Health Advances at the American Congress for Rehabilitative Medicine
The evolution of the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) began in the 1930s with a founding focus on a single emerging modality and now boasts a position as the largest multidisciplinary-centered rehabilitation organization in the country. ACRM was first a medical academy for x-ray therapy, broadened to more physical therapies, then focused in on physical medicine, and finally extended outward again to address both physical and psychological issues. Core disciplines are medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and psychology. The door is not shut. Anyone can join. Now a subset of the heterogeneous organization’s membership is casting a broader net.
Inclusion Check-in: Are Integrative Practices in New Federal Opioid Legislation, National Academy, and FDA Activity?
One can easily count the chickens of non-pharmacological approaches highlighted in multiple organizational guidelines and state strategies related to pain and opioids. But one definitely cannot count on them hatching inside each new, significant policy initiative. Regular medicine tends to regress toward a non-inclusive mean in pain treatment. And “mean” may be the operative word – at least from the perspective of individuals who remain unaware of the integrative therapies and practitioners that may help them. This is an irregular Integrator look at the level of inclusion in recent major initiatives related to pain and opioids. To start, the federal
Helene Langevin MD, CM to Provide New Integrative Leadership at NIH: What Can We Expect?
In early 2008, the leadership of the National Institutes of Health for the second time caused concern among many in the integrative health and medicine field by naming a director of what is the now National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) who had zero experience in the field the director was to oversee. Imagine a head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute with no experience in any cardiology, pulmunology or hematology. The first was Stephen Straus, MD, a hard-line NIH lifer who never tried nor apparently was interested in experiencing any of the complementary or alternative
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