The philanthropic collaborative for integrative medicine: partnering for health and healing.

Alternatives for the various philanthropists interested in changing medicine. In April of 2001, at Miraval in Tucson, Arizona, the two women brought together 25 physician leaders in integrative medicine with the same number of philanthropists. This event and the subsequent larger meeting at the Rockefeller Estate and Conference Center in Pocantico, New York, resulted in the formation of the Philanthropic Collaborative for Integrative Medicine. The philanthropists who gathered at Pocantico agreed to form an organization that would be dedicated to strategic, philanthropistdriven initiatives to advance the field of integrative medicine on a national basis. Now 18-months old, the Collaborative has 19 members. “As a nation, we are spending more healthcare dollars and getting sicker and sicker. We believe that principles of integrative medicine as we define them are part of the answer,” says Penny, who is the current president of the Collaborative. (Bill Sarnoff served as the first president.) “Our top 4 goals are changing the way physicians are educated, increasing access to integrative care, championing physician leadership, and increasing public awareness.”