Acupuncture’s Six Biggest Barriers – the ANF Strategic Plan for 2015 and Beyond
Posted on February 19, 2015 by Matthew Bauer
The Acupuncture Now Foundation’s Executive Committee recently approved a strategic plan for the ANF for 2015 and beyond. We sent a copy of this to several Acupuncture related organizations and want to share this with all. We believe addressing these following 6 issues will go a long way toward accomplishing our mission of educating the public, healthcare professionals, and health policymakers about acupuncture’s true potential. While the following gives details of specific goals, I can sum up the ANF’s goal in a single sentence:
We seek to bring down every barrier that is preventing acupuncture from meeting its true potential as a health care resource.
Everything about this organization; from its structure and legal status, its desire to include all stakeholders who legally practice acupuncture, to its focus on reaching out to the Acupuncture community in several different countries, was done as part of a strategic vision to begin the process of accomplishing this goal. This may seem like a mountain too high to climb but, like Lao Tzu said, it begins with a single step.
The Acupuncture Now Foundation’s Executive Committee recently approved a strategic plan for the ANF for 2015 and beyond. We sent a copy of this to several Acupuncture related organizations and want to share this with all. We believe addressing these following 6 issues will go a long way toward accomplishing our mission of educating the public, healthcare professionals, and health policymakers about acupuncture’s true potential. While the following gives details of specific goals, I can sum up the ANF’s goal in a single sentence:
We seek to bring down every barrier that is preventing acupuncture from meeting its true potential as a health care resource.
Everything about this organization; from its structure and legal status, its desire to include all stakeholders who legally practice acupuncture, to its focus on reaching out to the Acupuncture community in several different countries, was done as part of a strategic vision to begin the process of accomplishing this goal. This may seem like a mountain too high to climb but, like Lao Tzu said, it begins with a single step.
1. The Problem: There is no windfall profit to be made off of acupuncture’s acceptance:
Medicine is big business and many medical institutions have enjoyed financial success and prestige thus making them entrenched and inclined to maintain the status-quo. Most new medical advances that displace current practice have big money behind them because of their profit potential. It takes time and a great deal of effort to change the status quo in medicine and this typically happens when a group invests significant time and resources into promoting its “product” with the expectation of a profitable return on its investment. Acupuncture is a product of a different time and culture and its growth and acceptance is not being met with open arms despite the many positive contributions it could make. Without the potential to turn a profit, no group has materialized that has the time, expertise and financial backing to do what is needed to address the resistance of the status quo and see that acupuncture is given serious consideration.
Our Solution: The ANF seeks to build a coalition for “collective funding and marketing.” No single vested interest could profit from spending what it would take to contend with the resistance acupuncture encounters, but thousands of Acupuncturists and dozens of companies that supply Acupuncturists could, collectively, raise the resources needed to address this resistance. We also seek to pursue grants from public interest foundations and similar sources funding public health and educational initiatives.
2. The Problem: Research underestimating “real” acupuncture’s value:
Research done on acupuncture often concludes that sham/placebo acupuncture does about as well as real acupuncture. These findings are seized on by acupuncture critics who cite this as proof of their belief that acupuncture is only placebo and should not be used because it is unethical. While this extreme position has not stopped acupuncture from becoming more accepted within the public and mainstream medicine, it has and continues to slow this acceptance. While not as extreme as the placebo hypothesis, others have taken the view that while acupuncture does seem to have real and useful clinical effects there is no “point specificity” so no need to follow traditional acupuncture theories such as taught in acupuncture schools. A prime example of this thinking is the study commissioned by the Veterans Administration called “Evidence Map of Acupuncture”.
Our Solution: The ANF is now in the process of working with an international team of researchers to undertake a comprehensive review of acupuncture research with a special emphasis on investigating the issue of acupuncture “dosing” (number and frequency of treatments). It is our belief that most acupuncture studies done in the West did not give adequate consideration to the question of appropriate dosing. This has led to under-treating causing the “real” acupuncture in these studies to under perform compared to real-world clinical results and this is likely the biggest reason why the real acupuncture does not consistently outperform the sham. We will call for any study that did not give an adequate rationale for their treatment dosing to be considered invalid and for the issue of adequate dosing to be a requirement for any future study. We will produce at least two white papers covering this topic as well as issues relating to acupuncture mechanisms and cost effectiveness. We are putting together an excellent international team of researchers for this project and will not only publish our findings but use creative marketing/communicative means to see that these findings cause the changes necessary to more accurately reflect acupuncture’s true potential.
3. The Problem: No Best Practice Guidelines:
The acupuncture community has not yet developed Best Practice guidelines. Every medical field that is a true “system” of medicine needs to go through the process of developing guidelines to help establish how to carry-out that medical system to its best degree. While many acupuncturists may think that acupuncture is too much of an “art” to be boxed-in by best practice treatment guidelines, we believe it is possible and necessary to set some general guidelines. The development of such guidelines will not only benefit practicing Acupuncturists; it will also provide guidance to researchers.
Our Solution: The ANF will produce a set of recommendations for the types of best practice guidelines that should be achievable and begin the call for gathering experienced Acupuncturists to undertake a consensus-building process. Our President, Matthew Bauer, has experience in such a consensus-building process having partaken in a think tank comprised of a dozen experienced Acupuncturists who developed such guidelines for a managed care company with the largest network of credentialed Acupuncturists in the U.S. For 15 years, Mr. Bauer has continued to work with helping to refine this proprietary managed care medical necessity review process and is confident similar best practice guidelines can be developed for profession-wide use.
4. The Problem: Lack of public education campaigns:
The public, other healthcare professionals, and health policymakers do not appreciate the true potential of acupuncture or the training of Acupuncturists.
Our Solution: We seek to raise the funds needed to hire a Communications/Public Relations firm to help us undertake multi-year and multi-pronged campaigns targeted to three main groups: the public, other healthcare professionals, and health policymakers. We can begin this process with as little as $5,000 per month but our goal is to raise 2-3 times that amount for a full campaign. We intend to target print and internet based media and especially social media and as well as produce videos and other digital media that not only informs but has clear calls to action and referral assistance. Our “Twice as Effective and Safer” videos struck a nerve with Acupuncturists with our Facebook announcement spreading to over 12,000 viewers and generating a theme within the feedback we received thanking us and saying “something like this was long overdue.” We believe producing additional educational/promotional materials including videos and other media will create a movement for Acupuncturists to rally around, drive patients into practitioners’ offices, and give a sense of pride to Acupuncturists. We have interviewed several PR/Communications companies and have selected one who stands ready to launch these campaigns once funds are raised to retain their services.
5. The Problem: Lack of a communicative tool to build a sense of community:
The “acupuncture community” is currently not a connected “community”. With the vast majority of Acupuncturists working in private practices and the majority of these in solo practices, many feel a sense of isolation and morale runs quite low.
Our Solution: The ANF seeks to produce a publication that will inform and engage Acupuncturists. The acupuncture field is a unique and rapidly growing field with a great deal of fascinating developments the world over. There is currently no publication that captures these exciting developments and presents them in a compelling way that is of interest to Acupuncturists. The ANF will work to develop a publication with relevant and captivating content and build readership to provide a steady revenue stream and build a sense of community among Acupuncturists. This publication will be by Acupuncturists for Acupuncturists and will cover stories of interest to Acupuncturists.
6. The Problem: Lack of a respected authority:
Currently, there is no organization that is well recognized as being a reliable, unbiased, and comprehensive authority on the subject of the practice of acupuncture. Without a recognized authority, the public, media, mainstream healthcare providers or health policymakers do not know where to turn to gather information regarding acupuncture.
Our Solution: The ANF will work diligently to gather authorities from various acupuncture provider types and countries as well as research experts to build our base of expertise and databases of information. We will use the professional communications consultants to help us not only gather data, but use communicative/marketing methods to see that the ANF’s expertise in this subject becomes recognized. With the help of these communications/marketing experts, we will develop campaigns not only for the public but for other health care professionals and health policymakers. The specifics of just what we do in these campaigns will depend on the amount of money we raise.
Help Needed: While our goals are ambitious and will require a level of cooperation and communication never seen within the acupuncture community before, we are committed to making this endeavor work. We have been encouraged by the support we are getting from Acupuncturists in several different countries. Virtually everyone who hears about our efforts believes it is needed and long overdue. The greatest challenge we face is reaching the tens of thousands of Acupuncturists and supporters of acupuncture scattered around the world and with no easy way to reach them. We need individual Acupuncturists and especially acupuncture related organizations to reach out to their own networks and help spread the word and encourage everyone to join and support our efforts. While donations are encouraged and gratefully accepted, we look to offer products and services that Acupuncturists already spend their money on such as our Continuing Educations courses as a means to raise funds. We need others with such things as their own courses or books to donate proceeds from those sales to this cause. Just getting many visitors to our website, Blog, and Facebook Pages will help us raise funds and of course, we welcome those willing to volunteer some of their time. This is a great opportunity for everyone in the acupuncture community to make a huge impact in helping acupuncture to reach its potential for the greater good of all. We encourage everyone to contact us through our website’s Supporters page to learn more about working together to achieve these goals.
Medicine is big business and many medical institutions have enjoyed financial success and prestige thus making them entrenched and inclined to maintain the status-quo. Most new medical advances that displace current practice have big money behind them because of their profit potential. It takes time and a great deal of effort to change the status quo in medicine and this typically happens when a group invests significant time and resources into promoting its “product” with the expectation of a profitable return on its investment. Acupuncture is a product of a different time and culture and its growth and acceptance is not being met with open arms despite the many positive contributions it could make. Without the potential to turn a profit, no group has materialized that has the time, expertise and financial backing to do what is needed to address the resistance of the status quo and see that acupuncture is given serious consideration.
Our Solution: The ANF seeks to build a coalition for “collective funding and marketing.” No single vested interest could profit from spending what it would take to contend with the resistance acupuncture encounters, but thousands of Acupuncturists and dozens of companies that supply Acupuncturists could, collectively, raise the resources needed to address this resistance. We also seek to pursue grants from public interest foundations and similar sources funding public health and educational initiatives.
2. The Problem: Research underestimating “real” acupuncture’s value:
Research done on acupuncture often concludes that sham/placebo acupuncture does about as well as real acupuncture. These findings are seized on by acupuncture critics who cite this as proof of their belief that acupuncture is only placebo and should not be used because it is unethical. While this extreme position has not stopped acupuncture from becoming more accepted within the public and mainstream medicine, it has and continues to slow this acceptance. While not as extreme as the placebo hypothesis, others have taken the view that while acupuncture does seem to have real and useful clinical effects there is no “point specificity” so no need to follow traditional acupuncture theories such as taught in acupuncture schools. A prime example of this thinking is the study commissioned by the Veterans Administration called “Evidence Map of Acupuncture”.
Our Solution: The ANF is now in the process of working with an international team of researchers to undertake a comprehensive review of acupuncture research with a special emphasis on investigating the issue of acupuncture “dosing” (number and frequency of treatments). It is our belief that most acupuncture studies done in the West did not give adequate consideration to the question of appropriate dosing. This has led to under-treating causing the “real” acupuncture in these studies to under perform compared to real-world clinical results and this is likely the biggest reason why the real acupuncture does not consistently outperform the sham. We will call for any study that did not give an adequate rationale for their treatment dosing to be considered invalid and for the issue of adequate dosing to be a requirement for any future study. We will produce at least two white papers covering this topic as well as issues relating to acupuncture mechanisms and cost effectiveness. We are putting together an excellent international team of researchers for this project and will not only publish our findings but use creative marketing/communicative means to see that these findings cause the changes necessary to more accurately reflect acupuncture’s true potential.
3. The Problem: No Best Practice Guidelines:
The acupuncture community has not yet developed Best Practice guidelines. Every medical field that is a true “system” of medicine needs to go through the process of developing guidelines to help establish how to carry-out that medical system to its best degree. While many acupuncturists may think that acupuncture is too much of an “art” to be boxed-in by best practice treatment guidelines, we believe it is possible and necessary to set some general guidelines. The development of such guidelines will not only benefit practicing Acupuncturists; it will also provide guidance to researchers.
Our Solution: The ANF will produce a set of recommendations for the types of best practice guidelines that should be achievable and begin the call for gathering experienced Acupuncturists to undertake a consensus-building process. Our President, Matthew Bauer, has experience in such a consensus-building process having partaken in a think tank comprised of a dozen experienced Acupuncturists who developed such guidelines for a managed care company with the largest network of credentialed Acupuncturists in the U.S. For 15 years, Mr. Bauer has continued to work with helping to refine this proprietary managed care medical necessity review process and is confident similar best practice guidelines can be developed for profession-wide use.
4. The Problem: Lack of public education campaigns:
The public, other healthcare professionals, and health policymakers do not appreciate the true potential of acupuncture or the training of Acupuncturists.
Our Solution: We seek to raise the funds needed to hire a Communications/Public Relations firm to help us undertake multi-year and multi-pronged campaigns targeted to three main groups: the public, other healthcare professionals, and health policymakers. We can begin this process with as little as $5,000 per month but our goal is to raise 2-3 times that amount for a full campaign. We intend to target print and internet based media and especially social media and as well as produce videos and other digital media that not only informs but has clear calls to action and referral assistance. Our “Twice as Effective and Safer” videos struck a nerve with Acupuncturists with our Facebook announcement spreading to over 12,000 viewers and generating a theme within the feedback we received thanking us and saying “something like this was long overdue.” We believe producing additional educational/promotional materials including videos and other media will create a movement for Acupuncturists to rally around, drive patients into practitioners’ offices, and give a sense of pride to Acupuncturists. We have interviewed several PR/Communications companies and have selected one who stands ready to launch these campaigns once funds are raised to retain their services.
5. The Problem: Lack of a communicative tool to build a sense of community:
The “acupuncture community” is currently not a connected “community”. With the vast majority of Acupuncturists working in private practices and the majority of these in solo practices, many feel a sense of isolation and morale runs quite low.
Our Solution: The ANF seeks to produce a publication that will inform and engage Acupuncturists. The acupuncture field is a unique and rapidly growing field with a great deal of fascinating developments the world over. There is currently no publication that captures these exciting developments and presents them in a compelling way that is of interest to Acupuncturists. The ANF will work to develop a publication with relevant and captivating content and build readership to provide a steady revenue stream and build a sense of community among Acupuncturists. This publication will be by Acupuncturists for Acupuncturists and will cover stories of interest to Acupuncturists.
6. The Problem: Lack of a respected authority:
Currently, there is no organization that is well recognized as being a reliable, unbiased, and comprehensive authority on the subject of the practice of acupuncture. Without a recognized authority, the public, media, mainstream healthcare providers or health policymakers do not know where to turn to gather information regarding acupuncture.
Our Solution: The ANF will work diligently to gather authorities from various acupuncture provider types and countries as well as research experts to build our base of expertise and databases of information. We will use the professional communications consultants to help us not only gather data, but use communicative/marketing methods to see that the ANF’s expertise in this subject becomes recognized. With the help of these communications/marketing experts, we will develop campaigns not only for the public but for other health care professionals and health policymakers. The specifics of just what we do in these campaigns will depend on the amount of money we raise.
Help Needed: While our goals are ambitious and will require a level of cooperation and communication never seen within the acupuncture community before, we are committed to making this endeavor work. We have been encouraged by the support we are getting from Acupuncturists in several different countries. Virtually everyone who hears about our efforts believes it is needed and long overdue. The greatest challenge we face is reaching the tens of thousands of Acupuncturists and supporters of acupuncture scattered around the world and with no easy way to reach them. We need individual Acupuncturists and especially acupuncture related organizations to reach out to their own networks and help spread the word and encourage everyone to join and support our efforts. While donations are encouraged and gratefully accepted, we look to offer products and services that Acupuncturists already spend their money on such as our Continuing Educations courses as a means to raise funds. We need others with such things as their own courses or books to donate proceeds from those sales to this cause. Just getting many visitors to our website, Blog, and Facebook Pages will help us raise funds and of course, we welcome those willing to volunteer some of their time. This is a great opportunity for everyone in the acupuncture community to make a huge impact in helping acupuncture to reach its potential for the greater good of all. We encourage everyone to contact us through our website’s Supporters page to learn more about working together to achieve these goals.