The Global Landscape: Organization and Association News

ACCAHC update: Project for Integrative Health and the Triple Aim The Center for Optimal Integration: Creating Health of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC) has launched 2 key projects. These are meant to fulfill the organization’s mission to support diverse communities of learning by sharing useful and timely information to support the values, practices, and disciplines of integrative health and medicine. In March, Global Advances in Health and Medicine featured an overview of the Project to Enhance Research Literacy (PERL). This month, the spotlight turns to the Project for Integrative Health and the Triple Aim (PIHTA). The PIHTA initiative promotes the intersection between the values of integrative health and medicine (treating the whole person, using least invasive methods first, partnering with others, supporting self-care, and creating health) and the goals of the Triple Aim, which are reducing costs, enhancing the patient experience, and improving population health. To support engagement and implementation decisions, the project features a growing body of highquality research and gray literature evidence showing how the Triple Aim is advanced through integrative practices and professions. The project showcases applied aspects of this intersection. As an example, the PIHTA repository includes a descriptive listing of integrative patientcentered medical homes. In addition, given the growing number of employer-led worksite health clinics, the “examples in practice” section will expand to include profiles on these unique environments that are including integrative professions to increase productivity and to contain costs. PIHTA is being developed to serve a diverse group of stakeholders including employers, patientcentered medical homes, accountable care organizations (ACOs), insurers, governmental payers, hospitals and health systems, practitioners, administrators, and educators—groups and individuals interested in how the integrative professions can support the changing healthcare landscape. To promote ongoing dialogue, PIHTA launched the webinar series “A Short Course on Understanding the Triple Aim Landscape.” One session features a former deputy director for strategic planning at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on ACOs and the potential for integrative health. Another, from the chief executive officer of The Beryl Institute (Bedford, Texas), examines integrative health in patient experience improvement. The series will conclude with a 4-person panel of experts exploring how the integrative professions are concordant and discordant with existing quality measures. Each is or will be available through this link. In 2015, PIHTA plans a second webinar series, “Voices from the Field: Examples in Practice” with a more granular understanding about how integrative health operates against the backdrop of the changing healthcare landscape. In partnership with the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), PIHTA is also assisting in the development of a tool kit about credentialing and privileging mechanisms for the integrative professions. PIHTA has received grant support from Visual Outcomes, The CHP Group, the Leo S. Guthman Fund, and Life University. Submitted by: Jennifer Olejow nik, PhD, project manager, ACCAHC