A new venture between Bastyr University and AOMA Graduate School of Integrative Medicine has united the two schools. They are set to become the "AOMA College of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine," within the University, after the final approval of the NWCCU and the Department of Education. This new partnership was unanimously approved by Bastyr's Board of Trustees and AOMA's Board of Governors.
Dr. Mac Powell, President of Bastyr University said, "Our institutions share a common mission and vision – to transform the health and well-being of our communities and train the future leaders in the healthcare field. Bastyr combining with AOMA provides significant opportunities to strengthen and expand the degree and certificate programs that we each currently offer to the benefit of the students and the communities we serve. Through AOMA becoming part of Bastyr, both institutions hope that we will create a College of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine that will draw the best students from around the world, and produce life-changing research."
Bastyr has campuses in California and Washington, and offers degree programs in naturopathic medicine; acupuncture and Oriental medicine; ayurvedic sciences; and herbal sciences, to name a few. The University also has clinics in both Seattle and San Diego, which provide an array of services.
AOMA, based in Austin, Texas, is a top-ranked institution offering graduate programs in acupuncture and Oriental medicine. Founded in 1993, AOMA is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. AOMA also is one of the largest providers of acupuncture and Chinese medicine in Austin, with two clinics in the metropolitan area.
"We are very excited to become a part of the Bastyr University community. We are looking forward to collaborating as we grow our educational programs and patient services, as well as furthering research efforts and the advancement of the fields of acupuncture, Chinese Medicine and natural medicine in its entirety," said Betty Edmond, MD, President and CEO of AOMA.
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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