In 2016, the NCCAOM announced the formation of the NCCAOM Academy of Diplomates. The Academy was formed as a division of the NCCAOM to facilitate expanding the membership services the NCCAOM had been offering its National Board-Certified Acupuncturists (NCCAOM Diplomates).
Early in 2016, in an effort to document what Diplomates primarily want the NCCAOM to provide in the way of support, an outside communications and marketing consultant conducted a needs assessment survey. This survey consisted of a series of in-depth focused interviews with Diplomates, representing every demographic around the country.
The consistent refrain when asked what the NCCAOM could do to help acupuncturists was to educate the public about the benefits of acupuncture and East Asian medicine, and to educate the public as to who is qualified to provide acupuncture services. Interviewed Diplomates consistently stated that NCCAOM should help create the demand for their services so that every practitioner who wants to work has an easier time filling their practice.
To that end, the NCCAOM began a public education campaign that continues to focus on providing education to the public, legislators, regulators, politicians, insurance companies and other healthcare providers. This campaign has already increased the visibility of National Board-Certified Acupuncturists. By the close of 2016, the NCCAOM staff had posted 460 unique articles, press releases or social media clips resulting in 542,445,460 unique visitors to the 9,042,978 unique stories published in the media as a result of the NCCAOM online posts.
In September 2017, alone, NCCAOM staff posted 61 clips which resulted in 51,431,489 unique visitors to these clips or additional stories resulting from these online clips. The NCCAOM Academy of Diplomates staff have already posted a number of resources on its website for practitioners, and is planning to revamp the site to make it more user-friendly as it develops additional resources and business tools for new and existing Diplomates.
The Academy recently engaged an experienced lobbyist who, along with his staff are focused on developing toolkits for acupuncturists, state associations, and national organizations to make their efforts more effective when engaging with politicians, legislators and regulators. Another ongoing effort is to promote and facilitate the hiring of the NCCAOM Board-Certified Acupuncturists into conventional medical centers and systems, now that the Joint Commission has mandated that acupuncture be considered as one of nonpharmacological pain management treatment strategies.
Overall, the main strategic goal of the Academy is to see an increase in the number of job opportunities for National Board-Certified Acupuncturists, thereby ensuring the safety of the public and highest standards of care. We want the demand for services provided by acupuncturists to skyrocket. The formation of the Academy is to focus on the needs of individual Diplomates and, in conjunction with the work of state associations and other national organizations, will increase the much-needed visibility of acupuncturists. Indeed, there is much work for all of us to do to ensure the growth of our profession. The NCCAOM Academy of Diplomates is here to directly support the Diplomates, while also promoting the profession. The NCCAOM Academy Board welcomes your input.
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.
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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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