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.
NOMAA Petitions for National Accreditation
The National Oriental Medicine Accreditation Agency (NOMAA) has submitted a petition to the U.S. Secretary of Education requesting that it be recognized as a national programmatic accreditation agency. Should NOMAA's petition be granted, it would join the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine as the only national accrediting agencies for acupuncture and Oriental medicine programs recognized by the Department of Education.
NOMAA was created in 1999 as an offshoot of an ad-hoc advisory committee that was responsible for establishing the National Board of Acupuncture Orthopedics. In May 2002, it was converted to a nonprofit public corporation aimed at increasing the quality of education at schools of acupuncture and Oriental medicine.
The NOMAA Doctor of Oriental Medicine (OMD) program consists of a 4,000-hour core curriculum, including 2,500 hours of didactic biomedicine, Oriental medical science, and clinical medicine, and a 1,500-hour clinical clerkship. The curriculum requirements are based on degree programs offered at Oriental medicine schools in China, with consideration given to curricula from professional schools in South Korea.
To date, NOMAA has received endorsements from the Council of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Associations and the Council on Oriental Medicine Education. It has also received applications from several institutions interested in offering doctoral programs in acupuncture and Oriental medicine. In May 2005, it granted conditional accreditation to South Baylo University's doctoral program.
For more information, visit NOMAA's Web site at www.nomaa.org.