2003 Annual Report

IMA PROGRAMS

Website/IT

Thanks to the continued efforts of our webteam, the IMA website continued to improve in look, content and traffic:

Site visits: Our website traffic continued to increase in 2003. At the end of 2002, our website was receiving 3,000 visits per month. By the end of the 2003 traffic had increased to 5,000 visits per month. We continue to be positioned among the top integrative medicine sites on the Yahoo! and Google search engines.

“Find a Practitioner” page: In 2003 we added to our website the “Find a Practitioner” page listing both online databases of holistic professional association membership and online regional directories of CAM practitioners.

Calendar of Events: Theresa Ochenkoski enthusiastically assumed the role of Calendar of Events Coordinator and has more than doubled our volume of online events listings.

Links Directory: We continued to expand our links directory, from 200 to over 300 listings.

On the IT scene, web programmer Justin Goltermann began work to put the IMA’s database online (password-protected).

Newsletter

Jennifer Lewy stepped down in 2003 as IMA Newsletter Editor to pursue other IMA projects, and is now mentoring our new Editor, Catherine Saar. The bimonthly newsletter published five issues in 2002 and focused on improving the quality of its reporting.

Feature stories in 2003 explored holistic and integrative modalities such as laughter therapy and integrative vision improvement, and the health benefits of black cohosh and tea; covered local politics, including attempts by the Massachusetts naturopathic doctors to gain state licensure; and offered useful ideas to readers on marketing their healthcare practice and on the use of circle process in healthcare management. We have begun to establish alliances with state and regional holistic professional newsletters to establish mutual publication rights of each other’s news stories.

Events

Following the high-quality/low-turnout experience of our May 2002 Public Forum, the IMA adopted an events strategy aimed at addressing the most pressing needs of the integrative medical community. This resulted in two collaborative workshops in the spring of 2003 on how to foster the growth of hospital-based integrative healthcare programs and self-standing integrative/holistic centers. Both events drew high evaluations from participants. In December the IMA hosted its first leadership forum for Massachusetts holistic/integrative professional associations, drawing representatives of 15 healing modalities including chiropractic, herbalism, holistic nursing, reiki and naturopathy.

Developing workshops and forums that bring together stakeholders in New England’s integrative/holistic healthcare scene and that help address their needs is clearly a niche that the IMA is capable of filling. We intend on developing more such events in 2004.

We also held five networking gatherings organized by Karl Berger, plus a screening of the documentary film The Laughing Club of India. The IMA also appeared at the Center for Balance’s annual holistic fair in Newton, MA.

Mobile Clinic for Caregivers

With the departure of Mobile Clinic Manager Nancey Kinlin for a cross-country bike odyssey and June Reidlinger from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy to pursue studies in naturopathy out West, the Mobile Clinic was inactive for most of the year. However, in November it burst into action with the largest clinic to date, involving 19 caregivers giving approximately 100 complimentary treatments at the Caring for the Whole Person on the Cancer Journey conference at Lesley University’s Institute for Body, Mind and Spirituality. Therapies on offer included massage, chiropractic, reiki, healing touch, and cranio-sacral therapy. Almost all conference attendees visited the Clinic, prompting conference director Ken Zeno to comment, “You did a fabulous job of coordinating everything associated with the Clinic. I loved the results. The room looked quite nice and the energy in the room was peaceful. I am so pleased that we offered this service at the conference.” In December, the Institute secured a $1,000 grant from the Elizabeth Whiteside Charitable Trust to fund the Clinic’s return in 2004.

Research

In preparation for our two spring workshops, the IMA conducted and published a survey examining challenges faced by managers of integrative medical departments at New England medical facilities, and a similar survey examining challenges faced by owners/managers of self-standing integrative/holistic centers. Common themes expressed in these two surveys included financial pressures and the challenge of effectively communicating the value of complementary/alternative therapies to hospital administrators, doctors, and the general public.

CAM Access Initiative

This project was started in July when IMA intern Laura Brion identified and interviewed healthcare providers in New England that offer integrative/holistic services for free or at a significant discount. This information was then assembled for posting on the IMA website under “Free/Discounted Care”. This page will be launched in the spring of 2004. The IMA hopes that the CAM Access Initiative will enable individuals to more easily identify affordable care and encourage more members of the CAM community to find balanced and fair ways to increase access to their services without sacrificing their own sustainability.


ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Personnel

Board members: January 2003 saw the arrival of two new Board members, Sabina McAllister, Lic.Ac. of Waltham, MA, and Alex Tatevian, D.A. of Warwick, RI. Sabina abruptly departed the IMA in possible connection with a move to the UK. Alex Tatevian resigned as well. In addition the membership terms of Anne Doherty, Jennifer Lewy, David Sollars, and Faith Simolari expired and they chose not to run for re-election. This significant turnover was countered by the arrival of four new Board members for the 2004-2005 term: Michael Basso, President of the Connecticut Holistic Health Association; Kristen Lombard former Co-Director of Integrative Care at Mercy Hospital in Maine; Joan Strauss, Operations Director for the Healing Connection at Union Hospital in Lynn, MA; and Harvey Zarren, Cardiologist and founder of the Healing Connection. Karl Berger and Rosa Buffone remain on the Board.

Staff: We welcome Catherine Saar who has taken on Jennifer Lewy’s job of IMA Newsletter Editor. We welcome Cynthia Linton who has taken on the role of Mobile Clinic Manager. We welcome Marilynn Carter who has taken on the role of Assistant Clerk (archiving our work) and newsletter mailer. We bid a fond farewell to our website designer Crystal Beckvold whose responsibilities have been assumed by Sean Jarboe, and to Calendar of Events Coordinator Beth Abelow, whose work is now undertaken by Theresa Ochenkoski. We also bid farewell to database manager Jon Meyer and welcome Justin Goltermann who has taken on this work. We also thank Intern Laura Brion for her work on our CAM Access Initiative.

Media/PR

We continue to lack leadership in the area of Media/PR and as a result can report no TV, newspaper or magazine coverage in 2003. However, the IMA’s December leadership forum was prominently featured in the December issue of the Collaboration for Healthcare Renewal Foundation Newsletter, a national publication covering integrative and CAM industry news.

Memberships

The Integrative Medicine Alliance had 49 paying non-Board 2003 memberships, and 6 complimentary memberships in 2003. A strategy to double memberships in 2003 was thwarted by the departure of board member Sabina McAllister who was coordinating the IMA’s development work.

Income and Expenditure

Although our 2003 financial report are still being tabulated, it would appear that the IMA raised a similar amount of income in 2003 to the $12,600 it did in 2002, with approximately $4900 coming from event income, $500 in sponsorships, and roughly $7500 from memberships. The IMA also received a generous in-kind grant of one year’s free development consultation via the non-profit organization Women in Development, which has been helpful in clarifying our organization’s mission. We are continuing to hold expenditures to a minimum and this has been paying off.

For the first six months of 2003 the IMA adopted an aggressive approach to reduce the 2001 debt owed to IMA Coordinator Karl Berger and succeeded in lowering it from $19000 to $14,500. In June the Board and Karl determined this approach was not sustainable and renegotiated a debt reduction agreement based on 25% of certain unrestricted income, which will bring the debt down to zero in a few years while maintaining the IMA’s fiscal health.

This atmosphere of fiscal stability empowered the IMA to recruit and hire a part-time Administrator, Julia Smith, who started work in January 2004, and to begin to pay Karl Berger for coordinating the IMA as new funds permit.