May has been super busy with meetings with both online and in-person attendance.
Yes to Life 20th Anniversary
Tracey Smith (FMAR) was honoured to be invited to the Yes to Life charity 20th anniversary celebration. Yes to Life is a wonderful charity supporting the use of integrated medicine in cancer care. https://yestolife.org.uk/all-news/
The celebration was in the Member’s dining room at the House of Commons and brought together a diverse array of guests, including healthcare professionals, advocates, supporters, volunteers, staff and individuals impacted by cancer, to commemorate two decades of unwavering commitment to their mission.
Yes to Life’s Practitioner Support Programme offers a structured framework to contribute and engage with the community. It provides an opportunity to become integral partners in their efforts to promote integrative approaches to cancer care.
See here for more details. https://yestolife.org.uk/practitioners-support-programme/
CNHC first meet up
For the first time since the pandemic the CNHC Profession Specific Board members were able to meet in person and it was lovely to do so. The topics discussed were mainly marketing orientated as there had been input from a member of the public regarding claims being made by registrants.
Integrated Health Collaboration (IHC)
The Integrated Healthcare Collaborative (IHC) is a collection of leading professional associations and stakeholders within complementary, traditional and natural healthcare. These associations are working together on common areas of interest to increase access to these therapies, promote greater integration with conventional Western medicine, and improve patient outcomes. The major themes of our topics this month were:
- the success of the IHC Sustainable Health Day, held on April 6th every year.
- Further discussion into the potential for the complaints made to the CNHC to affect other therapies over time.
- The recent receipt of an email asking about a specific outcome measure of a medical symptom caused red flags and on following it up, we discovered that many members had received the same email over a large geographical area. We have flagged this up and plan to seek confirmation from the ASA that they will not follow up on complaints prompted by this sort of campaign to discredit practitioners within our industry.
- Future plans include setting up a new All Party Parliamentary Group for Integrated Health and this has become more pressing with the influx of new MP’s expected after the General election in July.
World Reflexology Consortium (WRC)
This group consists of 4 international reflexology membership organisations: the AoR, the Reflexology Association of Canada, Reflexology New Zealand and the Reflexology Association of Australia. The aim of the group is to share knowledge and experience to help enhance and promote member benefits of each membership organisation for the benefit of Reflexology globally. This quarter’s meeting was all about comparison of our qualifications with the intention to a set structure for transfer of skills between the four countries involved. This will enable greater global mobility of members.
College of Medicine’s Beyond Pills campaign
Tracey Smith (FMAR) attended the launch of the ‘Shifting the Balance Towards Social Interventions: why the UN and WHO are calling for mental health reform’ report. This is part of the College of Medicine’s Beyond Pills campaign and is about recognising the over reliance on the bio-medical model for mental health care. There is a global and urgent need to apply a human rights-based approach to mental health. That human rights should be respected and that over medicalisation and coercion tactics should be reduced. This powerful message is coming from both the UN and WHO.
Read report here: https://beyondpillsappg.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Beyond-Pills-APPG-Shifting-the-Balance-Report-2024-1.pdf
