Pacific College of Oriental Medicine obtains grant funding from NIH
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) granted Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM)-New York campus $670,000 dollars for the project titled Evidence Informed Practice: Faculty and Curriculum Development last fall. The grant focuses on training acupuncture faculty and students to track down, understand, and utilize research so that clinical acupuncture practice can be informed by evidence, thereby optimizing the quality of patient care. PCOM joins a small and elite group of Oriental medicine colleges that have been successful in attracting NIH funding.
Spanning five years (September 2013-2018), the grant includes collaboration with Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, where principal investigator Dr. Belinda Anderson is an Assistant Clinical Professor, and Northwestern Health Sciences University (NWHSU). PCOM-NY and Einstein are currently in their 6th year of an inter-professional student education exchange program in which Einstein medical students visit the PCOM-NY Acupuncture clinic and PCOM-NY students participate in an Einstein anatomy lab. This program was recently distinguished in an article in the peer-reviewed journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing (2012, Vol. 8:377-381).
Training for faculty in evidence informed practice will use curriculum and teaching materials developed at NWHSU through their NIH NCCAM grants. Faculty will incorporate evidence informed practices into classes, curriculum development, and supervision of student acupuncture interns treating patients.
Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Announces New President
Dr. Mao Shing Ni, Chair of the Board of Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, announced that Lois Green, MHSA has been appointed as President. Green will succeed retiring President, Lawrence J. Ryan, PhD. According to Mary Flaherty, Chair of the Board of Trustees Search Committee, Green emerged as the top candidate from a national pool of applicants. Green earned her Master of Health Services Administration degree from the University of Michigan. As clinical associate professor at the University of Southern California (USC) Price School of Public Policy, she gained extensive experience in administration of the School's health policy and management degree programs, student and faculty affairs, and curriculum development.
Kentucky Gets Licensed
It took years in the making, but Kentucky finally got full licensure for acupuncturists. Senate Bill 29, which changed acupuncture from a certified to a licensed profession. The bill passed the house and it was signed by Gov. Steve Beshear on Apr 2. This is the culmination of numerous recent efforts by acupuncturists in the state to receive licensing. The bill was introduced January 7, 2014 and brought into the Senate licensing occupations committee where it passed unanimously and was sent to the Senate. It passed the Senate and went on to the house licensing occupations committee where it was also passed unanimously. It becomes effective this month. The Kentucky State acupuncture Association brought this legislation forward. They also did a legislation education day on Jan 30th at the state capital in Frankfort where community style treatments were done for anybody that came to the Capitol Annex. Representatives from the Kentucky State acupuncture Association traveled to Frankfort Kentucky for the signing ceremony.
PCOM Receives Approval from WASC to Offer FPD
The Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM) is well into the process of developing and offering what has become known as the first professional doctorate (FPD) degree in acupuncture and/or Oriental medicine. The College has received approval from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) to offer the program. At the same time, the College's academic leadership team is using this as an opportunity to review its master's of science programs with the goal of reducing repetition, increasing efficiency, and creating better articulation with the College's post-graduate doctorate (DAOM). For more information, visit [url=http://www.pacificcollege.edu]http://www.pacificcollege.edu[/url].
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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