Bruce Nordstrom, D.C. on March 27, 2001

This section is compiled by Frank M. Painter, D.C.
Send all comments or additions to:    Frankp@chiro.org

DR. NORDSTROM: Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to be here again today. I am here representing the American Chiropractic Association.

As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. With that in mind, I urge the Commission to ensure that the promotion of wellness is included in its final recommendations to Congress. It is our understanding that the Commission may be considering the development of a consumer-oriented alternative medicine division within the Department of Health and Human Services. The ACA strongly supports this concept.

The Commission could recommend that Congress appropriate sufficient funds for the division to launch a wellness campaign. In the era of increased consumer access to health care information via the Internet and other vehicles, there are many conflicting reports on the efficacy of many CAM procedures. A federally funded campaign on wellness could address these misleading reports. As we all know, the information is just voluminous, and someone to help show people how to address that would be very helpful, I think.

Such a wellness campaign could have many facets, including but not limited to targeting the insurance industry, the workplace, and also basic education at the elementary school level.

For example, a wellness campaign that targets the workforce could focus on the statistics that show that although safety and wellness come at an up-front cost, a more user-friendly work environment reduces risk and fatigue. Therefore, prevention and wellness not only decrease overall costs, it also protects their most valuable resources, their employees.

The insurance industry could be targeted with the message that wellness works. Once payers and their policymakers see the bottom line cost savings realized by those who embrace a wellness concept, one would hope that they would provide early and regular wellness interventions to those they insure.

If consumers are to embrace the concept of wellness, it must start with the children. In the wellness context of basic health care education, the wellness campaign could be targeted to ensuring that students be introduced to the whole spectrum of health care practitioners and their services, not just traditional medicine. This could go to the extent of computer education on the basics of ergonomics. We are potentially generating a whole class of people with carpal tunnel syndrome at way too early an age.

I would just like to quickly add that I also want to agree with the concept discussed by the previous panel, that language is important and we should avoid anything that promotes a "we" versus "them" mentality. Thank you.

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