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Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC) Enters 2007 as Dues-Based Organization, with a Philanthropic Grant and an Executive Director Transition

Work of founding executive director Pamela Snider, ND, honored

February 2007

Reed Phillips, DC, PhD, the chair of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC) is effusive in his praise of the work of ACCAHC's founding executive director, Pamela Snider, ND. Snider will step down from her position after three years, but stay on ACCAHC's executive committee.

Says Phillips: "Pamela built a multi-disciplinary team and a safe, disciplined, respectful, and exciting context for us to collaborate. Thanks to her patient efforts, for the first time in history, organizations representing all of the leading complementary health care professions have chosen to pay dues to an organization—ACCAHC—which will allows us to collaborate with each other and with conventional educators in advancing our missions. That Pamela has pulled this off says a lot about what she has accomplished."

ACCAHC was founded in March 2004 as an initiative of the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium and in the context of the National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Health Care: Creating Common Ground (NED). Start-up funding, which supported Snider's organizing efforts into early 2006, came mainly through a single donor, Lucy Gonda.

Snider will be succeeded as interim director by her close collaborator in the founding of both NED and of ACCAHC, John Weeks. Weeks served as NED's founding director.

ACCAHC Core Participation

ACCAHC's core participation, initially, was through representatives of the councils of colleges and accrediting agencies of the five disciplines with federally-recognized accrediting agencies. These are chiropractic medicine, massage therapy, acupuncture and Oriental medicine, naturopathic medicine and direct-entry midwifery. ACCAHC has also maintained a category of membership for traditional world and emerging professions, such as Yoga therapy and Ayurvedic medicine.

Snider, who plans to remain on the ACCAHC executive team, reflects on the work: "Many of us have noted our shared issues and a common vision for transforming health care and health creation as educators and professionals for years—especially in the context of the wider move toward integrating care. As our relationships in ACCAHC deepened and our agenda clarified, we began to realize that what we were creating was not a time-limited project but an organization which could be a uniquely effective part of the health care and educational landscape for years to come."

In July of 2006, ACCAHC's participants formally decided to begin a transition out from IHPC and become a self-sustaining, dues-based organization. A dues structure was established with a suggested level of $1000-$5000 per year based on the size of an organization. ACCAHC also clarified additional membership features: certifying agencies of recognized professions would be invited as core members; mechanisms were clarified through which traditional world and emerging professions would be represented; and a single college membership category ($250) was created.

Membership solicitation began in 2006. Decisions are linked to meeting dates and budget cycles of potential members. The following organizations have committed to becoming dues-paying members as of January 1, 2007:

Gonda Donation to Facilitate 2007 Retreat, "Hot Spots," Independence

ACCAHC chair Phillips notes that ACCAHC's move toward becoming an independent 501(c)3 charitable organization is based on a business model for ACCAHC that is part dues and part grants. Says Phillips: "We know that the robust agenda developed by our member educators cannot be managed based on dues payments. We will seek focused grants and the assistance of some visionary philanthropists who can see how collaboration between educators of these disciplines can advance healthcare."

ACCAHC received good news on this front in late December when the organization's founding donor, Lucy Gonda, chose to make a $30,000 grant to support ACCAHC's work. Gonda says her donation honors the decisions of ACCAHC organizations to begin paying membership dues, and the hard work of the ACCAHC executive team under Snider's direction.

While details have not been worked out, the funds are expected to support four ACCAHC initiatives. One is a member retreat. Second are the costs associated with the move to independence. A third is a booklet resource presently underway on the disciplines. The fourth is a retreat in which a small, multi-disciplinary group will begin, in an organized way, to explore new ways to approach some of the "hot spots" where the ACCAHC member disciplines have sometimes been in conflict.

Transition to Independence and New Executive Director

Snider's decision to leave was prompted by her need to work full-time in a core project for her profession for which she serves as organizer and executive editor, the Foundations of Naturopathic Medicine Project (whose academic home is the National College of Natural Medicine, Portland Oregon). The international, collaborative project involves 170 contributors from 6 countries and 9 colleges, and includes a series of symposia, conferences and working groups leading to an in-depth textbook on the foundations, the philosophy and their clinical application for naturopathic medicine. (See interview at www.ncnm.edu/news_events/Foundation-of-Naturopathic-Medicine-Project.php)

Snider, who co-led the naturopathic medical profession's effort to create its definition and principles twenty years ago, co-conceived the project after Elsevier Publications contracted to write a book on her profession: "We believe this project can have a significant and positive influence on the future of naturopathic medicine. Much as I love working collaboratively with other disciplines, this must be the focus of my work now." She adds that she looks forward to continuing to support ACCAHC as a volunteer with the executive committee.

Weeks, who is presently serving ACCAHC in an interim capacity, is a long-time national leader of collaborative efforts in the integrated care arena. He has worked closely with Snider on ACCAHC's development since the beginning. Weeks also produces the Integrator Blog News & Reports (www.theintegratorblog.com). Phillips, ACCAHC's chair, notes that "the whole ACCAHC group feels lucky to have John step in" during this transition.

Phillips makes a special point of noting how indebted ACCAHC is to IHPC for "laboring and giving birth to us." He particularly credits the work of Janet Kahn, PhD, IHPC's executive director, and Sheila Quinn, IHPC's board chair. Phillips states that ACCAHC anticipates continuing to work closely with IHPC through the transition process, and after independence "to move policy changes that will create better health for the people we serve through advancing integrated healthcare."

Key ACCAHC Action under Snider's Direction
2004-2006

Collaboration

Research

Policy