Disillusioned by decades of disease-focused medicine, more doctors and patients are now shifting their focus to whole-person health.  Using commonsense strategies of continued education, lifestyle changes and adding complimentary care we are expanding our thoughts on well being leading to greater vitality through this health care crisis.

Duke University for example has a 30K-square-foot building dedicated to Integrated Medicine complete with meditation rooms, exercise and fitness facilities, a kitchen for cooking healthy meals.  They offer routine wellness workshops, complete with a health retail store and library.  There are treatment rooms for body work, and a team of professionals collaborating on patient care.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital/affiliate with Harvard Medical School received a Five Million Dollar grant from Bernard Osher Foundation to open a new Integrative Care Center with an emphasis to combine the best of conventional and complimentary therapies.    “Patients are looking for alternatives such as chiropractic, acupuncture, body work, education, meditation. The outcome is a program providing patient centered, evidence based, comprehensive care.” Said Dr. David Eisenberg MD. Director of this Department.

Stanford University Medical Center in 1998 opened the Center for Integrative Medicine with evidence based practices combining the best of alternative and conventional  treatments for a whole person approach.  This program includes physicians, psychologists, acupuncture, massage therapist and class instructors for whole health education involving patients and their families.

I could go on and on and on reporting on the practices of Ivy League Medical Teaching Universities and the addition of Integrative Care.  The point is to show, this is no longer progressive, cutting edge medicine, this is  quality whole health care provided by the leading health care institutions nationwide.

Because integrative medicine (IM) places less emphasis on prescription drugs and more emphasis on preventative treatments, it holds promise for lowering national healthcare costs. But while IM works its way into the mainstream healthcare machine, the out-of-pocket costs to individuals can be prohibitive.  This is where Wellness Without Walls offers a powerful component as a Learning Organization, using experiential education and personal mastery that a strong dynamic in any business and even my dynamic in creating very real healthy communities.

As patients begin demanding integrative care, and as doctors take note of successful patient outcomes integrative whole health learning organizations have found a solid place in standard medical schooling. Accordingly, the lines between conventional and alternative methods will continue to converge and eventually become one process of standard care

Andrew Weil, MD, widely considered to be the founding father of integrative medicine in the United States, describes this combined approach as an effort to restore "the focus of medicine on health and healing.  "In addition to providing the best conventional care," he notes, "integrative medicine focuses on preventive maintenance of health by paying attention to all relative components of lifestyle, including diet, exercise, stress management and emotional well-being. It insists on patients being active participants in their healthcare as well as on physicians viewing patients as whole persons – minds, community members and spiritual beings, as well as physical bodies."

With 30 years in Whole Person Health Care, Healthy Community Building at a Visionary, Leadership and Activist, I hope to hear from you on this matter in the near future.  Wellness Without Walls has answers, solutions and resolve for this Economic and Health Care Crisis by taking out the complexities of a Mind, Body and Spirit Global Concept and bringing it down to a 'grass roots movement of well being'.