National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Health and Medicine Division (HMD, previously known as the IOM – the Institute of Medicine)  Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education

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The Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health (ACIH, formerly known as ACCAHC) continued in 2021 in its eleventh year as a member of the Global Forum. There are almost 40 national health professional organizations that are members of this project and ACIH is the only organization representing the integrative health and medicine disciplines. Virtually all healthcare professions in the US and many globally are members of this Forum. We have been attending these meetings since the Global Forum’s inception making a significant impact in educating the members about the ACIH disciplines as well as actively participating in the meetings, workshops, reports, break-out groups and addressing the entire Global Forum. We share our publications with all the Global Forum members and this information has been very well-received. We also focus on the importance of prevention, health and well-being. Our goals are threefold: 

  • Represent ACIH and our disciplines to educate the other health professions at the Global Forum;

  • Educate ACIH members to topics prioritized by other health profession educational leaders; and

  • Advocate for creating a health professional workforce that focuses more on prevention, health professional self-care, and on health and well-being.

ACIH's core team is ACIH's Global Forum member, Elizabeth A. Goldblatt, PhD, MPH/HA, former Acting ACIH Executive Director, and her alternate, David O’Bryon, JD, CAE, immediate past ACIH Council Chair.

BACKGROUND: Establishment of the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education (the Forum) in January 2012 was inspired by two significant reports with major implications for the education of health professionals around the world. The first was an independent Lancet Commission led by Julio Frenk and Lincoln Chen titled Health Professionals for a New Century: Transforming Education to Strengthen Health Systems in an Interdependent World. The other was the HMD’s joint effort with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that produced: The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. Both of these reports provide a high-level vision for the health professions but leave it to educators to identify, through a process of continuous learning and innovation, relevant best practices and mechanisms for scaling up proven, improved approaches to integrated health professional education.

The Forum: The Forum’s mission is to apply an ongoing, multinational, multidisciplinary approach to illuminate promising innovations for achieving reforms in the instructional and institutional spheres. Members come together twice a year to network with other members and to attend a Forum-sponsored event (workshop or open meeting). The topic of the event is selected by the members themselves and is planned by a committee that represents the interests of the wider Forum membership. Written summaries and relevant outputs from each activity are available in hard copy and in PDF and can be downloaded free of charge from the Forum website, www.nationalacademies.org/HMD.

Membership: The Forum currently has approximately 40 appointed members who are academic experts and health professionals representing 19 different disciplines from 8 countries. It is currently co-chaired by Zohray Talib, MD and Pat DeLeon, PhD, MPH, JD. For Forum members and their bios, please click here.

For more information on the Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education and a complete listing of the Global Forum Publications, please click here.