Integrative Medicine & Health, From the Roots

by Taylor Walsh on January 15, 2017

in Blog,Integrative Health

“In Washington, DC, during a 1979 congressional briefing, the internationally honored futurist, Clement Bezold, PhD — who 20 years later would become a player in the integrative care movement — had his finger on the pulse. He told the assembled elected officials and their staff that there was a trend taking shape. He called it ‘alternative medicine.’

“Alternative, holistic, complementary, CAM, functional, blended, restorative, root cause, integrative. Something was afoot.”

Something is still very much afoot.

john-weeks_03The passage above is from the introduction to the e-book “The Rise of Integrative Health & Medicine: The Milestones: 1963—Present” which I co-authored with my colleague Glenn Sabin of FON Consulting. The building blocks of this timeline, were first recorded by our friend and colleague John Weeks (right) who wrote the introduction. John’s work as a reporter (The Integrator Blog), organization creator, manager and policy developer since the early 1980s personally shaped much of the historical framework that this timeline sets forth.

Behind each of these 125 events beginning in the 1960’s, whether as establishment of a professional organization, a report by the Institute of Medicine, an action by the NIH, or inspired paradigm busting by VA and US Army healthcare, or scores of US medical schools and physicians, lies a history of personal belief and commitment that has defied more than a generation’s worth of scorn, ridicule and disdain from conventional medicine. The pioneers whose work created the points on the timeline were inspired by the clear preferences of what are by now millions of people. The specialized care disciplines that emerged to serve them brought an urgency and commitment to whole-health healing that has reshaped U.S. healthcare along the paths set out along “The Rise.”

Click on the cover to download the e-book from FON Consulting:

rise_cover03

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