By Dr. Sharad Kohli
Recently I was honored by Integrative Medicine for the Underserved (IM4US) with the UR4US Award, recognizing my contributions to the organization. I was a Founding Board Member, co-created our Annual Conference, and founded and chaired our Policy Committee for several years. My term on the Board has come to an end, and after almost a decade with the organization, I’m transitioning into a leadership role on the Board of another non-profit called the Integrative Health Policy Consortium.
IM4US is an inter-professional organization committed to affordable, accessible integrative health for all. It was started by Family Medicine doctors, mainly working in Federally-Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), who were looking for a better way to care for their patients through a more holistic approach focusing on nutrition, lifestyle changes, mind-body techniques, and other low-cost practices such as acupuncture, herbs, yoga, and more. We always had a strong focus on providing culturally relevant care, as well as on addressing patients’ social needs (many of our clinics had developed food access programs, safe spaces to exercise, group visits to address loneliness and isolation, etc.), and recognizing that there was an educational void around this type of care, we created a conference in 2011 to share best practices. Eventually, we realized that there were all sorts of people doing this work, so we organically expanded to include behavioral health practitioners, nutritionists, naturopathic physicians, acupuncturists, chiropractors, midwives, herbalists, and anyone committed to working with the underserved. We are now considered one of the major collaborative integrative health organizations – the only one focused on the underserved – and have become national leaders in the delivery of group medical visits.
As we evolved, we realized that there are larger structural issues at play which needed to be addressed if we truly want everyone to live to their fullest potential. We began to really dig in around the social determinants of health, and felt that in order to address these, we had to think more about equity, diversity, and inclusivity (EDI) as a whole, as well as the policies that lead to health disparities. We have created an EDI Framework to guide our work and a Policy Committee active around advocacy on issues that matter to our patients. We have written letters opposing Public Charge and supporting the recent HHS guidelines for pain management, endorsing an integrative model and non-pharmacologic approaches. This is all at the core of integrative health and medicine, which looks at root causes and uses an expanded toolkit of evidence-informed practices to help patients attain optimal health.
My work with IM4US dovetails nicely with the mission and values of People’s Community Clinic. It is one of the reasons I chose to work at the clinic. When you think about it, People’s truly is an integrative clinic. People’s works on multiple levels to impact health – on a direct patient care level, at a midstream level with our various programs to address our patients’ social needs, and further upstream with our advocacy efforts. We have an expanded “toolkit” to support our patients including trauma-informed behavioral health, acupuncture, cooking classes, substance use services, and our incredible medical-legal partnership. My work with IM4US has helped inform how I practice in clinic with patients, as well as with the development of our integrative pain management program and group visits. At the same time, I learn every day from my committed mission-driven co-workers who have been doing this work for years. IM4US provides another opportunity to share what we’re doing here in Austin on a national level.
When people ask me to describe IM4US, I don’t actually say we’re an integrative health organization. I say we’re a social justice organization who believes that integrative health is one of the best paths to equity. I see People’s in the same light. Together, IM4US and People’s are poised to lead the charge in transforming how we view health in this country.
Onward in solidarity for the betterment of our patients, our community, and our nation!