Legislative Properties

Since convening the National Policy Dialogue, IHPC has built and maintained a vital network of people and organizations who are working every day to bring integrated health care to the forefront in the US.

IHPC functions as a critical watchdog of federal agencies charged with overseeing America’s health and health research needs.

- Early on, IHPC led an effort to deploy Congressional force in reproaching the Institute of Medicine for not appointing representatives of the CAM disciplines when seating its Study Committee on CAM. A letter was sent on Congressional letterhead to the IOM President, and was signed by CAM Caucus co-chairs Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).
- We maintain an active relationship with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the NIH.
  - In 2007 IHPC reminded both NCCAM leadership and legislators that NCCAM was no longer complying with its mandate to have healthcare consumers and licensed CAM clinicians on its Advisory Council.
  - IHPC formally requested that NCCAM call for a consensus conference on integrated treatments for chronic back pain. This initiative is currently in process.
IHPC keeps an eye on the activities of the FDA, including a recent letter to Congress calling on them to stop the FDA from interfering with women’s access to estriol, available by prescription through compounding pharmacists.
IHPC works to change the very architecture of American health care. IHPC convened an historic series of meetings with representatives of the American Medical Association and Alternative Link to discuss issues of concern regarding billing codes for CAM therapies—this process resulted in the appointment of two new CAM seats on the AMA’s CPT Advisory Committee.

IHPC answered the call to create a venue for dialogue and planning among CAM and conventional healthcare professionals so they could plan the changes needed in the educational processes and content of all healthcare professionals to create real integrated care. Both the Institute of Medicine and the National Policy Dialogue have also called for such collaborative planning.
- The IHPC Education Task Force provided both the impetus and an organizational home for creating ACCAHC, the Academic Consortium of Complementary and Alternative Health Centers. With representatives from the accrediting bodies and councils of colleges of all the regulated and several emerging CAM disciplines, ACCAHC provides—for the first time ever—a forum for information exchange across the disciplines, as well as opportunities to work jointly on important projects. ACCAHC established its independent incorporation in January 2008.
- IHPC convened the National Education Dialogue (NED) in 2005. Following a year of intensive planning, this 3-day meeting brought together an unprecedented group of over 70 educators from nursing, conventional medicine and all regulated CAM professions to discuss best practices in collaboration, cross-disciplinary curricular materials, and more. The reverberations from NED continue to influence ongoing collaborations that were seeded at the meeting.