FAOMRA, the Federation of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Regulatory Agencies, was created in 1998. It has spent the last two years increasing its membership and preparing the infrastructure needed to play an important role in the evolution of Oriental medicine in America.
The mission of FAOMRA is twofold. Its first mission is to provide an organization through which the state licensing boards and regulatory agencies may work together to better assure the protection of the public through good communication about licensure, practice, regulatory activity and professional disciplinary action in the professions of acupuncture and Oriental medicine. Its other mission is to promote the delivery of quality healthcare from these professions to the public.
How will FAOMRA accomplish these goals? By encouraging membership and participation of all regulatory agencies, and by exchanging information about licensing requirements, regulatory activities, disciplinary actions, educational programs, current issues, public outreach activities, scope of practice, standards of care, and reciprocity. Other objectives include: establishing and maintaining a website or comparable source of information that uses data standards conforming to healthcare industry requirements; developing and encouraging cooperation with other organizations whose objectives are related or similar in nature to the mission and objectives of FAOMRA; and discussing and developing appropriate standards regarding regulatory activities.
FAOMRA has been a sleeping giant, but it may soon emerge as a powerful national organization. All aspects of our profession are ultimately determined (or at least strongly influenced) at the state regulatory agency level. For example, scope of practice, educational requirements, and the types of exams that must be passed for licensure or legal recognition are determined by a state licensing board under the authority of a state law. These regulatory agencies are very influential when changes to state laws are presented to legislatures.
FAOMRA holds meetings twice a year (autumn and spring) at national conventions. A website (www.faomra.org) has also been created that provides information about the federation, its bylaws and meetings, and a membership application. The site also provides both an open public dialogue area, and a secured area for regulatory agency members. We hope this free service will facilitate dialogue about the key issues facing our profession.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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