Step by Step Efforts Win
Advances in Integrated Healthcare
When people get together to plan advances
in integrated healthcare, Sheila Quinn is likely to be there in a leadership
role. A writer and organizer
who strongly believes in bringing all the licensed disciplines fully
into our healthcare system, she's often the person who summarizes
the discussion and proposes specific action steps. She just has a knack
for efficient planning. "I've always been like that," she
says.
Quinn's older brother, mother and father were all MDs, so she was
raised in a very medical household. "While I was growing up I hardly
knew about the alternative disciplines," she recalls. "But
somehow I never liked taking medications; I never felt an affinity for
that kind of medicine. When I began to learn about CAM, it felt like
an intellectual home for me. I raised my children relying on naturopathic
medicine."
Her special knack for efficient planning was especially useful back in
1978, when Joseph Pizzorno, ND, first developed plans for what became
Bastyr College. Quinn became a co-founder and served as Bastyr's
vice president for finance and administrative affairs for its first 12
years. "One reason Joe and I made a good team is that he had the
long-term vision, while I focused on building the steps between where
we were and where we wanted to be," Quinn says.
Today, as Bastyr University, the school has more than 1,200 students
working for graduate and undergraduate degrees in subjects such as nutrition,
herbal sciences, naturopathic medicine and acupuncture/Oriental medicine.
But Quinn recalls the early years, when each step was a challenge. "At
first, developing faculty was a huge issue," she says. "While
many dedicated naturopathic physicians were excellent clinical practitioners,
they didn't have the background in basic medical sciences and training
in educational methods they needed to educate the next generation of
students. When we called conventional medical schools seeking PhDs in
biochemistry and physiology to offer courses at Bastyr, they hung up
on us."
Institute for Functional Medicine
Today, Quinn is the senior editor and manager
of special projects for the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM),
in Gig Harbor, Washington. "I
wanted to work for the institute because it focuses on ways to improve
prevention and management of complex chronic diseases. The IFM approach
emphasizes looking at the real causes of these conditions – such
as poor diet, stress, and lack of exercise – instead of just
dealing with the symptoms."
The institute welcomes all healthcare practitioners, both conventional
and complementary. "If you want to reverse chronic disease, you
have to look at the basic functionality underlying the disease," Quinn
says. "We don't teach algorithms. We don't offer
flow charts. What we say is, first you need to understand the patient:
their family history, their genetic predispositions, their environment,
their biochemistry and physiology. Once you understand how they got
to where they are, then you can intervene to produce change." (For
more information about the functional medicine approach, see the "Resources" section,
below.)
The institute hosts an annual symposium featuring topics such as "reversing
the rising pandemic of diabetes and metabolic syndrome" and "modifiable
factors beyond cholesterol." The symposium theme for 2005 will
be "The immune system under siege: new clinical approaches to
immunological imbalances in the 21st century." IFM also offers
educational programs in major cities throughout the United States,
including a six-day intensive on "Applying Functional Medicine
in Clinical Practice," plus additional one- to three-day clinical
modules.
Quinn is currently coordinating the work of 40 authors to produce a
400-page Textbook of Functional Medicine,
which will be available by the end of the year.
Public Policy Initiatives
For the past ten years, Quinn and a team of innovative thinkers have
been working towards an integrated healthcare system, in which conventional
medicine and the CAM professions would work together as a team, with
effective co-management and full communication in place to bring
the best of each discipline to people in need of care. This work
originated when she was executive director of the American Association
of Naturopathic Physicians, working along with Pamela Snider, ND
(then associate dean of naturopathic medicine and public affairs
at Bastyr University) and Candace Campbell (then executive director
of the American Preventive Medical Association).
When they first tried to interest legislators in this vision, they
were told, "we need more information," so they developed
a 22-page "National Plan to Advance Integrated Healthcare." The
next big step was a meeting in 2001 at Georgetown University, when
nearly 60 people from a wide range of healthcare interests came together
for the "National Policy Dialogue to Advance Integrated Healthcare:
Finding Common Ground." Those discussions were particularly successful
because of the attitude of the participants, Quinn recalls. "We
decided we weren't there to solve territorial disputes between
different professions. We met to find out where we already agree, and
to get people working together based on the common ground that already
exists." The report from the meeting was distributed to every
member of Congress, with a cover letter from the bi-partisan leadership
of the Congressional Caucus on Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Today this dedicated group of health policy advocates is organized
as the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC), a non-profit
think-tank, which Quinn chairs. "Our efforts are based on many
hours of work from dedicated volunteers," Quinn notes. "We
are so grateful to our respective institutions, which permit us to
do this work as part of our professional responsibilities."
Right now IHPC is coordinating a second Georgetown meeting, the "National
Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Healthcare: Creating Common
Ground." This meeting will bring together representatives of
conventional and CAM educational institutions to discuss changes in
the ways healthcare professionals are trained. "This is so important,
because if we don't change education we will never change the
system," says Quinn. "As new people leave the educational
institutions, they influence all the organizations they enter. They
push the envelope. That means changing education is a way to influence
the whole system."
Equally important, Quinn says, are continued IHPC efforts to increase
funding for research on individualized, multi-factorial approaches
to chronic conditions and diseases. "The CAM educational institutions
urgently need funding to train researchers and to conduct well-designed
research projects. We also need funded pilot projects that will actually
offer access to integrated care, and then carefully measure the outcomes.
IHPC's overall mission is to identify, articulate, and advocate
public policy that will improve access to high-quality integrated healthcare
services, including the full range of health systems, disciplines and
modalities. This mission has been close to my heart for nearly 30 years,
and now we have an organization that is steadily working to achieve
these goals."
Resources
For more information about the Institute for Functional Medicine, go
to
http://www.functionalmedicine.org
For more information about the National Education Dialogue, email kimballweeks@yahoo.com
Problems We Face |
IFM Response |
The cost of managing complex chronic disease will bankrupt the
healthcare system as our population ages, unless we help people
maximize healthy aging and reduce their dependence on expensive
drugs. |
The Institute for Functional Medicine trains physicians and other
healthcare practitioners to identify and heal the underlying clinical
imbalances of chronic disease, creating momentum toward health. |
There is a very long (sometimes decades-long) gap between the
emergence of research pointing to new treatments and their adoption
by the practitioner community, particularly for nutritional and
dietary interventions. |
IFM helps to shorten the time lag by emphasizing the absolute
necessity of understanding the emerging research in biochemistry
and physiology in the context of the clinical setting, with a focus
on diet and lifestyle. |
Health and disease prevention are largely the result of healthy
living, but the healthcare system does not focus on lifestyle change
or the underlying causes of disease. |
IFM helps clinicians teach their patients to make lifestyle changes
that are essential to their future well-being. IFM further supports
clinicians by providing useful information for patients. |
Elaine Zablocki is the editor of CHRF
News Files, a bimonthly emailed newsletter about the emerging
integrative medicine industry, published by the Collaboration for
Healthcare Renewal Foundation. |