Senate’s Integrative Health Leader Departs
The nation’s health champion in the US Senate is handing off the torch he has carried for holistic and integrative healthcare for more than 20 years. Tom Harkin of Iowa is retiring when his 30 years in the Senate concludes this year.
Harkin has not just advocated for more recognition and use of integrative therapies, he has written and pushed through legislation that now brings the thinking, ethos and principles of integrative, whole-person care deeper into US healthcare and more importantly into the law.
At the end of September, the leaders of the nation’s integrative health community — researchers, licensed practitioners and their professional organizations, physicians, nurses, and educators — assembled at Georgetown University in Washington for a day-long symposium: “A Call to Action on integrative Health and Medicine Policy: Advancing the Legacy of U. S. Senator Tom Harkin.” During the testimonial dinner that followed Harkin heard the litany of advances made as results of what have been groundbreaking legislative achievements.
Through Harkin’s efforts in the early 1990’s the National Institutes of Health began to research the health benefits and mechanisms of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, meditation, aromatherapy, energy medicine, yoga and naturopathic medicine among other healthcare approaches that had long been outside the conventional healthcare system. Long outside, but used by millions of Americans nevertheless, a fact that caught the senator’s attention 22 years ago.
Most importantly perhaps has been his final contribution in this journey: Section 2706 of the Affordable Care Act, whose provisions will protect licensed healthcare providers from discrimination and give the public broader affordable access to safe and effective — and reimbursed — health care options.
Sen. Tom Harkin, left foreground, rides the 25-mile “High Trestle Trail” north of Des Moines one of several in Iowa he helped fund. Photo courtesy of offenberger.com, Jefferson, IA.
The legacy and promise of 2706 of course is the reasons that we created CoverMyCare: to assist patients and health care consumers present the nation’s experience with integrative health and wellness services to their states’ insurance regulators. We have to tip our collective hats to Sen. Harkin for his leadership.
Top photo of Sen. Harkin in PE class by Andrew Potter, Marshalltown Times-Republican.
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