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The origins of the Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine (AIHM) date back at least to Evarts G. Loomis, a medical doctor trained at Cornell Medical School, who in 1958 opened the Meadowlark Center in California.1 Integrative and holistic medicine at the Meadowlark Center grew through key iterative steps into the American Holistic Medical Association (AHMA) in 1978, the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine (ABIHM) in 1996, the AIHM in 2013, and the Interprofessional Fellowship in Integrative Health & Medicine in 2016.
The effective medical management of acute disease received a significant boost from the discovery of antibiotics in 1928-evolving into the pharmaceutical model we have today that emphasizes drugs as a primary means to treat disease. Two years earlier in 1926, J. C. Smits coined the term holism, defined in Holism and Evolution as "the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution." This interplay between reductionism and holism forms a counterbalance in the history of medicine. Complementary and holistic medicine in the United States, relatively underground from 1930 to 1960, began to re-emerge with the awareness that chronic disease was replacing acute disease as the predominant health problem in this country2 and that a reductionist pharmaceutical model alone might not be sufficient for the prevention or treatment of chronic disease.
The rise of complementary medical schools in chiropractic, naturopathic, and traditional Asian medicine (TAM), all with a deep respect for holism, began in earnest during the 1960s in the United States. With the profession having been established in 1897, chiropractors are now licensed in all states and many other countries. Approximately 81 000 chiropractic practitioners in the United States see 14% of the adult population annually, mostly for back pain and other complaints related to the musculoskeletal system. Doctors of chiropractic are known for expertise in spinal manipulation and other forms of manual therapies, and they are increasingly being hired in integrated health delivery systems such as the Veterans Health Administration, the Department of Defense, and corporate health clinics. There are currently 17 accredited colleges of chiropractic.
Naturopathic medicine, a unique model of primary care medicine and one of the true sources of holism in health care, coalesced into a discrete...