The Global Landscape: Organization and Association News

The Center for Optimal Integration: Creating Health is a project of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC). The main goal of the Center is to provide a central, unified web portal for the dissemination of information that supports the values, practices, and disciplines associated with integrative health and medicine while engaging a diverse group of stakeholders in collaborative communities of learning. A recent project of the Center began in 2013 as a collaborative effort with 7 ACCAHC member institutions that received funding from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (now National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, NCCIH) to increase the incorporation of evidence-informed practice (EIP) into academic curricula. Resources developed through these grants were shared with ACCAHC and are housed in the Center via our Project to Enhance Research Literacy (PERL). EIP was identified in 2011 as 1 of 6 key “Competencies for Optimal Practice in Integrated Environments,” as endorsed by the ACCAHC Board of Directors and by councils of colleges associated with the 5 licensed integrative health and medicine professions represented by ACCAHC. PERL was funded during 2014 principally through the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation with the working title “Organizing, Convening, and Stimulating Engagement in Evidence Informed Practice (EIP).” Our goal was to promote cultural change toward EIP in all ACCAHC member academic institutions by utilizing the PERL repository and Center site as a base to develop and nurture communities of learning among educators in the roughly 175 institutions and programs affiliated with ACCAHC. A key strategy for 2014 included engaging the leadership of ACCAHC-member organizations as instrumental partners in dissemination. One highlight of this engagement was a collaborative webinar series dedicated to EIP for the massage therapy community. This series of 5 webinars journeyed from the role of research in massage therapy to practical ways of incorporating evidence into curricula and everyday practice. Produced in conjunction with multiple massage therapy organizations, the webinars have drawn professionals from outside of the massage therapy community using EIP as an approach to interprofessional education. Work in 2015, also funded largely through the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation, will focus on the promotion of a standardized ACCAHC EIP competency assessment across all academic programs affiliated with ACCAHC.