Acupuncture Association of Colorado News

Monthly Newsletter - January 2021

Leslie Ponto — Fri, 22 Jan 2021 19:29:02 GMT

Happy 2021 and the upcoming Year of the Ox!

This newsletter finds the AAC Board of Directors and committees working hard to make the upcoming year impactful and productive for acupuncturists as we enter in the heart of our Practice Act process. We are looking for acupuncturists who would like to volunteer on our subcommittees and for one volunteer to sit on our Legislative committee. If you have interest, please contact a board member or email info@acucol.com.

Please read through the rest of the newsletter for more useful information. Happy New Year!

Kacey Wardle, L.Ac.
President, AAC Board of Directors

Vaccine Update

Most counties have included acupuncturists specifically in phase 1B with other healthcare who regularly come within 6ft contact with patients. There is some confusion around acupuncturists getting vaccines in Phase 1B. So please be patient with county health departments and vaccine providers. Once you have an appointment, make sure you bring your license.

In general, we are finding that you can check with pharmacies at both Safeway and King Soopers and make appointments (be patient and check back often, spots seem to open up fairly randomly). We have also heard of many people successfully emailing their county health departments and giving the name of their clinic and requesting vaccines. Boulder County seems to currently not allow acupuncturists or massage therapists to receive the vaccine. We are very aware of this and working on it.

Acupuncturists in counties that are giving us a hard time have in most cases found if they just go to the Safeway or King Soopers pharmacy and search for available spots, the acupuncturists are being given the vaccine.

.https://mhealthcheckin.com/covidapptfbclid=IwAR0BFeg_eP_FdBF8O4ByAVOJh3bhsMhvRnQwdPkd3p14Tj4fCe8WZZgAI7w

AND

https://www.saludclinic.org/covid-vaccine

If you still have trouble, here is the link to the CDPHE documenting professions who should be in Phase 1A and 1B. While acupuncturists and chiropractors are not listed specifically, it clearly states that this is just a guideline and not all professions who should be vaccinated are included.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19HVTM3NYiSoaKvKFwSzxYrcnjzqL14KjzOn4tx0SHlU/edit

CDC, State and County Guidelines on Known Exposures at Clinics

We are receiving more and more reports of health clinics (not necessarily acupuncture clinics) giving incorrect information to patients after a known exposure.

While we acknowledge it can be very confusing and personal, there are clear guidelines that must be followed if you, as a healthcare professional, becomes infected. Please know what your county is recommending. Here are the current State and CDC recommendations:

https://covid19.colorado.gov/workplace-outbreak-guidance

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/testing.html

Thank you for keeping you and your patients safe. Acupuncturists in general are doing great. We must be extra cautious, not only to keep all our patients and families safe, but also because this is the year of our Practice Act and Scope of Practice Review. If one of us messes up, it could reflect on all of us and possibly result in more onerous reporting and infection control being included into law for us.

Legislative Update:

The initial report to DORA to begin the review stage of our Practice Act was submitted the past Monday. We will now meet with both acupuncture stakeholders (acupuncturists, schools, and national organizations) as well as external stakeholders to get feedback. DORA will be doing the same. Please stay tuned for specific updates. Again, we are looking for member volunteers. If you have interest please contact the AAC.

Additionally we are working on getting acupuncturists who are qualified to do injections to get on the list to be cross trained to give vaccines. This has been a challenge but we are making progress. So please be patient if this is something you would like to do or contact the AAC if you would like to work on this.

The CO Secretary of State recently announced an Additional Paycheck Protection Program Resources Available for Colorado Businesses

The U.S. SBA recently re-opened the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for new borrowers and certain existing PPP borrowers. Updated PPP guidance outlining Program changes to enhance its effectiveness and accessibility was released on January 6 in accordance with the Economic Aid to Hard-Hit Small Businesses, Non-Profits, and Venues Act.

The first step in accessing these forgivable loans is to prepare the materials necessary to apply. That includes confirming your eligibility, gathering the necessary records (payroll, rent, utilities, tax and bank records) and estimating the eligible amount of your forgivable loan.

For additional details on the Paycheck Protection Program’s forgivable loans and a comprehensive list of state and federal resources available for Colorado’s businesses, visit https://oedit.colorado.gov/covid19#ppp. Please check the website frequently, as the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade will be making updates as a hotline and new information becomes available.

The next Board meeting is this coming Sunday, January 24th at 10 am.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYpfuyqrDoiGdE6jw8LKjBFpKjHhR1kmQ1c

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Thank you to everyone’s ongoing support in the King Sooper’s Community Reward Program! Every little bit counts.

If you don’t know, you can earn money for the AAC when you use your loyalty card at King Soopers or City Market. You, your family, and your friends can all help raise money for the AAC just by doing the shopping you already do

Register your rewards card from King Soopers or City Market to the AAC Non-Profit Organization (NPO, number AP717), and the AAC will earn cash for purchases. As you can se above, the AAC has earned over $400 in the last quarter!

It only takes a few moments to set it up. Here’s how:

Onlin

Sign into your Kings Soopers/City Market account. New users please create an account.
Look for King Soopers Community Rewards (or City Market) selection under the MENU > SAVINGS> KING SOOPERS COMMUNITY REWARDS tab.
Search for the Acupuncture Association of Colorado either by name or AP717 and click enroll.

Phone app

Sign into your Kings Soopers/City Market account on the phone app.
Tap the 3 bars menu tab on the upper right. Tap Rewards. Tap Community Rewards.
Follow the instructions for enrollment. Search for the Acupuncture Association of Colorado either by name or AP717 and click enroll.

Easy-peasy. It’s free money for the AAC that doesn’t cost you anything.

The AAC thanks you!

For any questions contact the AAC at 303.572.8744 or email info@acucol.com

Our mission is to advance the profession of Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine as an integral component of health care in Colorado.

Monthly Newsletter - September 2020

Leslie Ponto — Tue, 22 Sep 2020 22:49:17 GMT

Message from the President:

As we move into the fall season, I hope everyone takes time for appreciation for the unexpected changes as well as some acknowledgment of sadness for some of the missed experiences and loss of the year.

As an organization it’s been a year of change and movement. I am so impressed with all the acupuncturists who have volunteered so much time, mental energy and thoughtfulness into growing our profession. We are lucky to have such caring and passionate people in our profession. I for one, look forward to the growth we can bring in the next few years.

We have lots going on, so as always read carefully, there is LOTS of info this month on member benefits to help you and your practice near the end of the newsletter.

Membership should have its benefits ;).

In appreciation,

Kacey Wardle, L.Ac

AAC Board of Directors, President

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DORA sent out a notice recently regarding a Virtual Permanent Rulemaking Hearing for the Director to consider adopting new and revised Rules 1.1, 1.2, 1.12, and Appendix B to implement Colorado House Bill 20-1326 (Endorsements/Creation of an Occupational Credential Portability Program), and Colorado Senate Bill 20-102 (Patient Disclosures Regarding Sexual Misconduct) to be held on Thursday, October 1, 2020, at 2:00 P.M. (MDT).

You can attend and make comments. The board has put together written comments before these final rules were published about current NCCAOM exams and board certifications. This is standard procedure for rule changes. If you or any acupuncturists have issues with DORA dropping the requirement of certification, and only requiring NCCAOM exams along with appropriate schooling, then you are able to testify or give DORA written comments on why.

As of now, the AAC board is remaining neutral on the new proposed rule as it seems inline with new law and still maintains safety for our patients.

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In an effort to represent the diversity of our profession, learn about career satisfaction and create opportunity by promoting the highest standards of professional practice, the ASA would like your input.

Please take the survey (approx 15 min to complete & chance to win $25 gift card).

https://tbicommunications.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eXKRo01pb9YV6El?&Source=AAC%27

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The annual AAC conference will be:

April 17-18, 2021

Marriott Westminster

Key Speaker: Lillian Bridges

Please mark your calendars. We hope you will be able to join and learn. It is currently scheduled in person. We are committed to keeping everyone safe and will keep this in mind in planning for this conference.

Thank You Volunteers & More Opportunity

We had a few volunteers step up for the 2021 Conference and we are so excited! Sara Lohmeyer with help from Piper Mullins (thank you both!!) will lead the committee.

The annual conference is the biggest fundraiser for the AAC as well as a chance for our acupuncture community to come together. With the sunset review coming up, we can use all of the help and participation we can get.

Please consider volunteering. Email info@acucol.com to let us know you’d love to help out!

We are also looking for members who are interested in stepping into leadership roles in fundraising, membership, and legislation. If taking a more active and vocal role in the AAC appeals to you please email info@acucol.com and we will put you in touch with the right person.

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Good News!

Based on ASA Insurance Committee inquiries, Triwest informed us yesterday that the "VA responded with authority for TriWest to remove the mid-level provider reduction required by Medicare." For dates of service of 9/1 and after, TriWest will be paying 100% of Medicare rates and NOT applying the 15% reduction for acupuncture claims. However, they did not provide information about whether they would reimburse claims reduced prior to 9/1 or follow up on our other claims processing concerns as of yet. We will keep you posted as we find out more!

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ICD-10 Changes Go Into Effect October 2020

ICD-10 Changes going into effect Oct. 2020 - please read this article from Acupuncture Today for more info!

https://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article_d.php?id=33912&nr=t

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New CPT Code for Additional Supplies: 99072

With COVID still very much active, CMS has released a new code that can be billed during this public emergency. The code is 99072 and it is used for additional supplies and time for cleaning.

99072- Additional supplies, materials, and clinical staff time over and above those usually included in an office visit or other non-facility service(s), when performed during a Public Health Emergency as defined by law, due to respiratory-transmitted infectious disease.

This code can be billed once per visit and the average charge is anywhere between $10-$20.

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Spam alert

Some AAC members have received some phishing scams. The AAC has not been hacked and no accounts have been compromised.

Emails listed on the AAC website are public. AAC members can choose whether or not to share your email on the website. If you wish to update your privacy settings you can go to this link to get help in doing so: https://gethelp.wildapricot.com/en/articles/147#by

If you choose to share your email on the website, then it runs the risk of being picked up by spammers now and again. Please always be mindful of emails that look suspicious. Keep in mind that if your email is not public, your contact information would not be visible to someone looking on our site for an acupuncturist.

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UPCOMING

5-Day Private Sale

for ALL AAC Members

October 26 – 30, 2020

20% OFF + FREE SHIPPING

AT LHASAOMS.COM

ACTIVE MEMBERS:

Mark your calendars & check your inbox

for a special promo code

NON-MEMBERS:

Join AAC today & get access to this

Private Sale

Lhasa is offering a one-time 20% discount with free Ground Shipping to AAC members. There will be some exclusions to the discount such as: KPC Herbs, Golden Flower Chinese Herbs, Mayway Herbal Products, Massage Tables, Chair & Stools, Monthly Specials and Outlet Deals. All orders with the promo code will get free Ground Shipping and orders over $250 will qualify for our Fast & Free 2-Day Delivery.

Encourage your acupuncture friends who aren’t AAC members to join the AAC and they can also get the sale price!

____________________________________________

Earn money for the AAC when you use your loyalty card at King Soopers or City Market.

You, your family, and your friends can all help raise money for the AAC just by doing the shopping you already do.

Register your rewards card from King Soopers or City Market to the AAC Non-Profit Organization (NPO, number AP717), and the AAC will earn cash for purchases.

It only takes a few moments. Here’s how to do it:

Online

Sign into your Kings Soopers/City Market account. New users please create an account.
Look for King Soopers Community Rewards (or City Market) selection under the MENU > SAVINGS> KING SOOPERS COMMUNITY REWARDS tab.
Search for the Acupuncture Association of Colorado either by name or AP717 and click enroll.

Phone app

Sign into your Kings Soopers/City Market account on the phone app.
Tap the 3 bars menu tab on the upper right. Tap Rewards. Tap Community Rewards.
Follow the instructions for enrollment. Search for the Acupuncture Association of Colorado either by name or AP717 and click enroll.

Easy-peasy. It’s free money for the AAC that doesn’t cost you anything.

The AAC thanks you!

For any questions contact the AAC at 303.572.8744 or email info@acucol.com

____________________________________________

Mark your calendar: the next Board meeting is October 18th.

Board meeting will be virtual, look out for the zoom link to register.

The Colorado Acupuncturist - July 2019

Leslie Ponto — Mon, 15 Jul 2019 15:09:37 GMT

Stakeholder Meetings for Sunset Review

This past month The AAC held the first of its internal stakeholder meetings for our upcoming Sunset Review. Becky Burgess, LAc of Urban Herbs in Avon hosted a group of AAC members from the Vail Valley, Carbondale and Paonia. The AAC board was represented by President, Liz Spetnagel and the AAC lobbyist, Lara Lee Hullinghorst. Please keep an eye out for announcements of upcoming opportunites to attend a stakeholder meeting near you! We will also be hosting a meeting via ZOOM to accommodate who might not be able to make their local meeting.

Here is some great feedback from the Colorado Acupuncture Group on Facebook from fellow practitioners who attended the stakeholder meeting in Vail Valley.

“Today I attended the first stakeholder meeting for the Acupuncture Association of Colorado, which was held for the practitioners in Summit through Garfield counties.

I wanted to hop on here and encourage everyone to attend their respective stakeholder meetings. It was incredibly informative and productive.

I received a better understanding of the importance of the upcoming Sunset Review on our Practice Act. I feel strongly that our lobbyist, Lara Lee Hullinghorst, is more than qualified. She has a thorough understanding of the political process, a strong alliance to acupuncture, and is well-connected within our legislation to make sure we are doing a better job at protecting our profession over the next 10 years.

I was also given some tactical resources- like who I should be contacting in my area and the best way to raise awareness, issues, and garner support from local legislators.

Please join the AAC and show your support for the folks that are voluntarily working their butts off on our behalf!! And definitely show up to your stakeholder meeting- they are listening!”

-Becky Burgess

“I was there as well, and want to second Becky's experience. It was informative, illuminating and ultimately empowering. Most of us are very busy, so taking a couple hours away from work or recharge time can be low on your priority list. Make the time and get to know what we can and cannot expect. Every single one of us that attended got more out of it than we expected!”

-Kellie Krasovec

AAC Board Meetings

Speaking of meetings, please check our website for the dates, times, agendas and call-in information for upcoming AAC Board meetings.

June ended with Liz Spetnagel, DAOM; Mark VanOtterloo, DAOM; and Tuesday Wasserman, DACM. representing the AAC in Vermont at the Society for Acupuncture Research Conference. SAR (https://www.acupunctureresearch.org/) is an important organization for anyone interested in being aware of and participating in, the most current research around our profession. The topic of this conference, “Acupuncture Research, Health Care Policy, & Community Health...Closing the Loop”, provided extremely useful information as the AAC moves forward in our work with the Opioid and Other Addictive Substances Interim Committee this summer in Denver where we will be represented by Tuesday Wasserman, DACM.

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The Colorado Acupuncturist Newsletter - July 15, 2018

Leslie Ponto — Sun, 15 Jul 2018 20:13:20 GMT

The Colorado Acupuncturist - July 15 2018

Meet Your New Board Members

Who serves your professional interests and represents you at the State and National level? Your AAC Board of Directors! Board membership is a 100% volunteer (unpaid) service position open to current AAC members. See a complete listing of our current board and learn more about serving your peers on the AAC Board of Directors.

Welcome to...

Timoni Slusher,LAc., MSTOM, Dipl. OM, now serving on the Membership Committee.Growing up in the mountains and deserts of Colorado, I have a deep-rooted love and enthusiasm for adventure and for being outdoors. I am an avid mountain biker, hiker, and trail runner. I enjoy yoga, swimming, and relaxing in the beauty of nature. I am honored to work with one of the top rated orthopedic teams in the nation at Alpine Orthopedics in beautiful Gunnison, Colorado. I love to work with athletes and fellow mountain bikers, of all levels from enthusiasts to the professional level. My skills, training and knowledge have helped my patients to recover from injuries, both chronic and acute, to increase endurance, performance level, and flexibility, and to maintain balance in their bodies.

Jessica Sylvanson,L.Ac., MAcOM., Dipl.OM, now serving as National Liaison to the American Society of Acupuncture.Jessica Sylvanson has worked as an acupuncturist in her home town of Gunnison Colorado for twelve years. She graduated with a Master's from the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine in 2006. She has taught herbal medicine courses and been a guest lecturer in the Medical Sociology class at Western State Colorado University for many years. She also worked giving acupuncture treatments to students in need through Western State's "Responsible Alcohol Partnership". She is currently serving as the President of the Way of Compassion non-profit organization. Learn more.

Sheila Liewald,LAc., now serving on the Membership Committee. Sheila is a board certified Chinese herbalist and acupuncturist. She has served the Front Range in private practice in Boulder and as staff acupuncturist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Lafayette, CO. She's written for several magazine publications and has hosted lectures on the various topics of natural health. She can be best reached through her practice at Red Aspen Wellness.

Heather Richmond,LAc., DAOM, now serving as Membership Committee. Heather lives in Louisville and works right in the heart of town on Main Street. She specializes in musculoskeletal pain management and internal medicine. She has a passion for treating veterans and is a non-VA care provider, working closely with former military members to treat a range of service-connected issues, including PTSD, TBI, and repetitive stress injuries. In her free time, Heather enjoys hiking, camping, and soaking in nature. Prior to Chinese Medicine, she worked in the California park service and as a firefighter for both California State Parks and Fallen Leaf Lake – a picturesque little town just outside of Tahoe.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES!

Become a VA Community Care Provider! The VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System is offering two upcoming webinars regarding Community Care and Provider Agreements. There are two different dates and times; you only need to attend one. Training will be a teleconference (phone-only) seminar conducted over the phone. Dial-in information is below. To receive a copy of slides (so that you can follow along), please contact Charissa, the AAC Office Manager at info@acucol.com. We would love to have many of our members sign up to learn more about becoming a VA Community Care Provider!

Training offerings (please select one):

Seminar 1: July 18, 2018 at 7:30 am - 8:30 am
Seminar 2: July 20, 2018 at 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm

Dial-in information:

Dial: 1-800-767-1750
When prompted, enter the participation code: 90195#

NOTE: We will have participants on mute until the end of the presentation, where we will open it up to questions and discussion. PLEASE DO NOT put your phone on hold, the hold music will play during the presentation and interrupt the seminar.

The Point of Contact for this initiative is Dr. Katie Beckett, mary.beckett@va.gov, or (303) 202-8284.

CLINICIAN NETWORKING

Tri-County Health Department Dinner! A networking opportunity to bring clinicians together to learn about opioids and chronic pain, and inform each other on different ways to manage pain. There are two opportunities to attend this dinner and networking event; Cost is $30 per person.

Doubletree Hotel – Thornton; August 15, 2018, 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Marriott Hotel – Park Meadows; August 16, 2018, 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm

To learn more, contact Linda Machol,secretary@acucol.com or Erika F. Marie, prchair@acucol.com.

AAC CONFERENCE NOTES

Did you miss the annual conference? We missed you. But, never fear! We’ve got you covered with a copy of select slides. Let us bring you up to speed on some of our latest work on your behalf, courtesy of the AAC Board’s Immediate Past President, Mark Van Otterloo.

LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear friends and colleagues,

I want to thank all of you that joined us at our annual conference in April. Our new Conference Chair, Erika Schultz, LAc. succeeded in organizing a well received presenter, made room for additional vendors, and worked with Yvonne Piper, LAc to raise the most money in one of our auctions to date!

We welcome those who put themselves forward to join our board, Sheila Liewald, LAc., Jessica
Sylvanson, LAc., Timoni Slusher, LAc., and Heather Richmond, DAOM, LAc.

Your Board is embarking on several projects including a strong drive to grow our membership both with current practitioners as well as the future ranks that are currently in school. We are working on a comprehensive plan that will include a public relations effort to help educate not only our state legislators but also the general public about what sets acupuncturists apart from other care providers. In the past few years we have found ourselves too frequently in a “reactive” position. As a profession, we need to be more proactive.

Starting now, the Acupuncture Association of Colorado is developing proactive, forward-thinking outreach initiatives to elevate our relationships with regulatory agencies, legislators, hospitals and physician groups. We hope to increase marketing and public awareness of the efficacy of acupuncture (aka “dry needling”) by trained, licensed acupuncturists, but we can only do this with your help.

Recently, your AAC Board was able to bring you a new opportunity to partner with the Veterans Association. The VA reached out to us knowing that the best way to contact the best of a group is to reach out to those who care enough to join their professional organization. We hope you participate in the VA teleconference training. Become a VA Community Care Provider, so you can treat veterans in your area!

Our membership dues are reasonable and go a long way towards improving acupuncture public education and patient care in Colorado. If you understand that proactive legislative efforts and public relations will help our profession grow, please make an additional donation to the AAC now and help us help you!

Donate Now

If you are not already a member, join the AAC today! Know a colleague who isn’t a member and should be? Forward them this email!

Thank you!

Liz Spetnagel, DAOM, LAc
President, AAC Board of Directors
president@acucol.com

Please Support Our Advertisers!

__________________________

Seminars available with an AAC Discount!

Sotai Movement Therapy

September 8,9,10, 2018

Here is a unique Boulder opportunity to learn Sotai movement Therapy September 8,9,10, 2018 at Southwest Acupuncture College. Sotai movement therapy is the perfect adjunct for acupuncturists and massage therapists. Sotai is an elegant, simple and effective form of neuromuscular re-education. Get 2 days of instruction with the 7 top American practitioners of classical Sotai manual medicine and a 3^rd day with Kyoto’s Hiroaki Komatsu sensei teaching contemporary Sotai Intuitivo.

For more information click here: Sotai Summit II - 2018.pdf

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Japan 9

November 1 -9, 2018

Study with Masters in Japan November 1 -9, 2018. Learn refined Japanese palpation and delicate needle techniques in Tokyo and Utazu Shikoku Island. This is a unique opportunity to experience Japanese culture while having access to the top practitioners of the art. Learn how and when to apply contact , superficial , shallow and deep needle techniques. Check out www.intouchjapan.org for in depth description and mini-videos of the teachers.

For more information click here: Japan 9 flier.pdf

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Channeling the Yellow Emperor: Achieving Your Personal and Professional Best

October 7, 2018, 9 am- 5 pm

Join bestselling author and translator of the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine, 38^thgeneration doctor of Chinese medicine and Taoist Master, Dr. Mao Shing Ni, as he shares the secret of health, success and happiness from the Yellow Emperor and the I Ching. In this highly interactive workshop, Dr. Mao will reveal to you the ancient secrets of the I Ching as he guides you on a journey of self-discovery, exploring your inner being, and your Five Element personality to help uncover your life’s purpose and actualize your true potential and experience increased success.

For more information click here: Yellow_Emp_Colorado.pdf

Office: +1 (111) 111-1111, Fax: 111-111-1111, Address: 2222 Street, City, Suite 123B | State 0
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The Colorado Acupuncturist Newsletter - April 15, 2018

Leslie Ponto — Wed, 11 Apr 2018 20:02:35 GMT

Message from the President

Dear Acupuncture Advocates,

Dry Needling: As I write this the proposed Physical Therapy Practice Act renewal bill (HB18-1155) bill is still in the Senate Health & Human Services Committee and we await their vote on Thursday. We will continue to update you on the bill’s progression and interpretation.

As we previously informed you, with barely 24 hours’ notice, the PT Board added an amendment to HB18-1155 in the House HHS Committee to add “dry needling” to their scope of practice. The move makes clear that they are concerned about our legal challenge to Rule 211, which is before the Colorado Court of Appeals, and are attempting an end run around the judicial process. The bill passed the House, but we managed to have 14 people testify to the Senate Health & Human Services Committee to help educate them on the public safety dangers of a physical therapist, with no formal training in the use of acupuncture needles, starting a weekend course on Friday and by Monday beginning to insert acupuncture needles as deep as 6 inches into patients who have no understanding of the risks of such limited training. This issue and the legislative process are incredibly complex, and timing is often unpredictable. As the bill continues to make its way through the legislature our lobbyist is doing his best to impress upon legislators the importance of protecting the public.

We have let the legislature know that at least 34 patients—including at least three patients in Colorado—have suffered serious adverse events caused by physical therapists performing dry needling. We continue to hear reports of injured patients in Colorado from both our change.org petition and social media. The injuries that are citable are shared with the National Center for Acupuncture Safety and Integrity (NCASI) so that injury reports are tracked. The three cited injuries on NCASI’s website for Colorado are: (www.acupuncturesafety.org)

Case 1. In November 2013, 17-year-old professional freeskier Torin Yater-Wallace suffered a penetrating right lung injury caused by a physical therapist performing dry needling. The penetrating right lung injury resulted in a traumatic pneumothorax (an accumulation of air in the pleural cavity resulting from blunt or penetrating chest injury and causing lung collapse). He was treated for the traumatic pneumothorax at the emergency department of the St. Anthony Summit Medical Center in Frisco, Colorado, and was admitted to that hospital on the same day. The traumatic pneumothorax required medical and surgical intervention. He was hospitalized for five days.

Case 2. In April 2015, 36-year-old senior recruiter Amanda Hilton suffered a penetrating left lung injury caused by a physical therapist performing dry needling. The penetrating left lung injury resulted in a traumatic pneumothorax. She was treated for the traumatic pneumothorax at the emergency department of the Good Samaritan Medical Center in Lafayette, Colorado, and was admitted to that hospital on the same day. The traumatic pneumothorax required medical and surgical intervention. She was hospitalized for three days.

Case 3. In June 2015, 41-year-old clinical social worker Lisa Kerscher suffered a penetrating lung injury caused by a physical therapist performing dry needling. The penetrating lung injury resulted in a traumatic pneumothorax. She was treated for the traumatic pneumothorax at the emergency department of the Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. The traumatic pneumothorax required medical intervention.

Also, if you come across someone who has been injured by dry needling it is important to have them record a complaint to DORA through their website. They cannot call DORA nor can they send them an email. The complaint forms for DORA are found here: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/dora/DPO_File_Complaint

Finally, please remember that dry needling is acupuncture in which an acupuncture point (a specific muscle or connective tissue site) that has become exquisitely tender, commonly known in the West as a trigger point, is punctured with an acupuncture needle (a fine needle of up to six inches in length) to cure, mitigate, treat, or prevent disease or other conditions, especially musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, including musculoskeletal pain. The American Medical Association (AMA) states, “Dry needling is indistinguishable from acupuncture.” For your fellow Coloradan’s safety please remember how to describe what dry needling is to your friends, neighbors, colleagues, and patients. A weekend course of training in an invasive procedure is inadequate and represents a significant public safety concern that we have shared with the Colorado judicial and legislative branches.

Procuring Substances for Injection Therapy: We have continued to meet with our new director at DORA about making the necessary rules to allow acupuncturists to procure appropriate injectables. According to federal law many injectables considered compounded require a patient-specific prescription, and this is still hindering our ability to procure substances. We have continued to research if we will need to pass a bill to get prescriptive authority just for these substances. The lobbyist from the Colorado Medical Society will be arranging a meeting so that we may discuss with CMS how we can obtain the necessary prescriptive authority for the listed injectables. Our legislative committee will continue researching a possible bill giving us prescriptive authority with the goal of resolving our issues in procuring substances for injection therapy. We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress on this subject.

American Society of Acupuncturists: AAC Immediate Past President, Kimberley Benjamin, and I represented the AAC membership at the annual ASA meeting last month in Denver, Colorado. The meeting was very productive and we were able to collaborate with and learn from other state trade associations and national entities. For a full overview of the weekend’s events please visit https://goo.gl/EpsCVk.

The meeting was attended by 27 state associations represented by 41 delegates, as well as representatives from CCAOM, NCCAOM, AAPAS, and DVCIPM. We had Skype/Zoom Meeting addresses by ANF and ACAOM, including a screening of the first segment of “Getting to the Point”– a new film by film maker Doug Dearth via the Acupuncture Now Foundation. Marilyn Allen and the American Acupuncture Council also sponsored a lunch program presenting information on ICD 11, which will include Traditional Medicine codes, and opened discussion for the potential for course development in orthopedic acupuncture. NCCAOM also presented a lunch program answering stakeholder questions. Our evening gathering was generously sponsored by Modern Acupuncture, and we had a valuable breakfast program sponsored by CM&F insurance looking at malpractice coverage options for the industry. We thank our general supporters as well, including Golden Flower Chinese Herbs, AcuClaims, Lhasa OMS, and Legendary Herbs. With help from these very generous sponsors, we completed a dense and meaningful agenda with fine spirit and strengthened collegial bonds. We are thrilled as well to announce that next year’s 4th annual ASA Council Congress will occur in conjunction with our first profession-wide national meeting in Washington, D.C.! Please keep your eyes open for more information (coming soon) on this industry-wide conference: “The State of Our Union: American Acupuncturists in U.S. Healthcare”. This will be a phenomenal event which will bring our industry into the national arena.

I hope to see you all at the conference April 21^st - 22^nd. As your industry trade association run by an all-volunteer board of directors, the AAC uses membership dues and conference income to maintain our efforts on your behalf, and we greatly need and appreciate your involvement and support. “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page for continued updates from the association and interesting news in the field of acupuncture.

Mark VanOtterloo DAOM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com
(720) 295-9323

_______________________________________________

Tuesday April 17^th is the Last Day to Register for the 35^th Annual AAC Conference!

Dear Colorado Acupuncturists:

The AAC volunteer Board of Directors has been working hard on behalf of Colorado Acupuncturists to educate legislators about the risks involved with Physical Therapists being able to perform acupuncture after attending a weekend course. We are making progress but WE NEED YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT.

Here are FIVE REASONS you should attend the conference April 21^st - 22^nd this year:

1. Fundraising - The annual AAC Conference is our largest fundraising event for the year. The AAC is run by a group of volunteer Board Members who donate their time to further the profession of acupuncture in Colorado. We cannot do this without your support. Please consider contributing to this mission by attending the conference this year while obtaining 14 NCCAOM approved and CA (pending) CEU's.

2. Networking - this year we are inviting ALL Colorado Acupuncturists (members and non-members) to attend our Membership Mixer sponsored by Blue Poppy and KPC Products. Even if you are unable to attend the conference, please consider attending the Membership Mixer Saturday 4/21 starting at 6:30! This is a great way to network with other acupuncturists and chat with AAC Board Members. We only ask that you make a $10 donation to the AAC organization if you are a non-member. If you sign up for membership that evening the fee for the event will be waived. All mixer attendees receive two drink tickets for beer, wine, soda or bottled water, and there will be live music to enjoy!

3. AAC Annual Meeting - All Members of the AAC are welcome to attend the annual meeting on Saturday 4/21 from 12:30pm - 2pm. An update on our legislative efforts around Dry Needling will be included, and we have proposed By-laws changes to vote on (stay tuned for an email soon to come). Complimentary lunch will be provided to conference attendees. All others will be charged $25 if you would like to have lunch. Payment can be made at the registration table, but if you are not registering for the conference and would like to attend the meeting (with our without lunch) please notify me at Conference@acucol.com or (720) 460-0766 by Monday, April 16th.

4. Silent Auction - this will be the largest AAC Silent Auction to date. We have incredible donations this year including trips, sports memorabilia, artwork, acupuncture supplies, CEUs and more. Take advantage of these incredible donations from our conference sponsors by bidding on these items and donating to the AAC! (See more info below.)

5. Jeff Nagel, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac. (last but by no means least!) - People rave about his presentations and unique style of acupuncture, and he was one of our most highly requested presenters. Jeff's innovative approach to training and healing will make this event unlike any other you have you attended before.

DON'T MISS THIS EVENT! We have a fantastic venue and event planned and we want to see as many Colorado Acupuncturists come together as possible this year!
______________________________

Registration closes Tuesday, April 17th for this event on April 21st and 22nd, 2018 at the Westminster Marriott.

Jeff Nagel, MA, LAc, Dipl Ac. Jeff is trained in the 8 Branches of Chinese Daoist Healing Arts, Medicine, Internal Martial Arts & Life Sciences and is an experienced long-time practitioner.

His two-day seminar is entitled Healing Stress, Anxiety, Depression & Pain - Precursors to Disease in Your Practice & in Your Life (Classical Chinese Medicine Daoist Style Special Applications of Master Tung's Holographic). 14 NCCAOM PDA / California CEUs pending.

More about the Course:

Classical Chinese Medicine traditions raise the question: What causes and promotes health and vitality and not just dis-ease? Some of the most effective answers and solutions to this question will be covered in this class:

“7 parts patient lifestyle adjustment + 3 parts doctor’s treatment”

Teachings include:

· How to cultivate Relax & Calm Down Qigong Breathing & Taiji Ruler Heart Calming Qigong for patients and practitioners.

· Learn simple & effective methods of Acu-Touch Pulse for diagnosis & treatment.

· Learn how to use internal-external herbal polarity-5 phase nutrition.

· Learn practical clinical applications to diagnose and treat stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD and pain before dis-ease sets in using Master Tung's Acupuncture and the 5 Phase Organ-Meridians and 12 Attitudes Method.

· Learn how to harmonize the emotions with Temporal Pulse Balancing, the “10 Essentials of Life” & Geopathic Medicine for stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD and pain.

These methods are practical and highly effective and can be implemented immediately in practice. The class will be taught through a combination of lecture, hands-on experience, and question and answer opportunities. Bring your most difficult case studies to class for group feedback and applied practical clinical applications.

Read more about Jeff, the conference and register here.

We are so excited for this conference, which will be a wonderful opportunity to connect with peers, get energized and learn amazing things. Register with a friend now and take advantage of buy one, get one half off discounts. I look forward to seeing you all there!

Kind regards,
Erika Schultz, L.Ac., Dipl. OM, ACN
Conference Chair, AAC Board of Directors
conferencecomm@acucol.com
(720) 460-0766

____________________________________________________

Our Most Exciting Conference
Silent Auction Ever!

The AAC's 2018 Silent Auction offers you an array of items to boost your practice as well as your fun time. Are you planning a vacation? Be prepared to be wowed with local, national and international trips, and the best news is you get a great discount and at least 30% of the proceeds go to our Legal Fund! Are you a Colorado Sports Enthusiast? We have Autographed Sports Memorabilia available for you, too! Enjoy CEUs and certifications! Do you want to get your holiday gift shopping started? We have gift cards, handmade items and much, much more to choose from.

Can't attend the full Conference this year? That’s ok! Join us at the Membership Mixer Saturday night starting at 6:30 to check out and bid on the Silent Auction items. If you cannot attend the mixer, but still would like to participate, you can request a list of the items via email at omwellnessllc@gmail.com, send bids to the same address and a volunteer will be in touch as the weekend bidding continues.

Yvonne Piper, DOM (NM), L.Ac., Dipl. OM
DirectoratLarge3@acucol.com,
Conference Committee
(720) 387-9522

_____________________________________

Activity Report 2018

This past year has once again been an incredibly busy one for your volunteer AAC board. We do our best to keep you up-to-date with our quarterly email newsletters. If you are a member and are not receiving our emails, please contact Office Manager Charissa Haines at info@acucol.com or call (303) 572-8744. If you have missed previous newsletters they are archived in the News/Classes tab of Acucol.com. As Mark mentioned above, many announcements, updates and interesting information are posted more rapidly on the Facebook page, so please “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page, click “Follow” (next to the “Like” button) and turn on notifications by hovering over the Following button until a drop-down menu appears and select “Notifications - On (Highlight Posts)”.

AAC board meetings: This year your volunteer board alternated 7 meetings between Denver and Boulder in addition to a few call-in meetings on timely actions. We have had board members from Fort Collins and as far afield as Colorado Springs and Buena Vista. Those who are not within driving distance may call in for the meetings which occur every 6-8 weeks. Please consider contributing to your profession by running for a board position as your help is needed! Last fall we were able to hold the first weekend board retreat in many years to train new board members, perform a S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) Analysis, set one- and five-year goals and refine our Mission: To advance the profession of Acupuncture and Traditional East Asian Medicine as an integral component of health care in Colorado. All AAC members are welcome to attend board meetings to witness and participate in the process of running the organization and working for our profession. Watch the AAC Facebook page for board meeting announcements and be sure to RSVP to hold your spot at the table.

Goals: While still dealing with paramount judicial and legislative issues, we are working hard on one of our most important one-year goals: to increase professional membership to 500 from 246 through outreach of the Membership, Conference, Fundraising, and PR committees. A robust membership is the only way our voices can be heard by policy makers and we can educate the public in a meaningful way. Five-year goals include having 50% of licensed acupuncturists in Colorado as professional members, hiring an Executive Director, Mandatory Insurance coverage - Medicare/Medicaid, and inclusion in CDC Pain Guidelines.

Website update: We continue to make improvements and additions in an effort to make our new website as user-friendly and educational a resource as possible for acupuncturists and prospective patients. If you haven’t done so, please log on to Acucol.com to check the status of your public profile, which is available under the “Find an Acupuncturist” tab as a way for patients to find you. New features include a Member Area that is only visible to logged-in members. This area has exclusive information such as any judicial efforts, member benefits, job postings, free access to read the peer-reviewed Meridians Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, and an an AAC newsletter archive that goes back to 2009. If you are having trouble logging in or have suggestions on how we can make the site better, please contact our Office Manager Charissa Haines at info@acucol.com or (303) 572-8744. She continues to help us keep things running as smoothly as we can. Please stop by the sign-in table to thank her. In an effort to conserve resources, Charissa will be emailing your PDA certificates this year. Thanks again for your membership and involvement, which are very important and mu

ch appreciated!

Linda Machol, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac.
Secretary@acucol.com
Secretary & Membership Chair, AAC Board of Directors
(720) 299-8278

_________________________________________________

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!

SILVER SPONSOR

BRONZE SPONSOR

The Colorado Acupuncturist - January 2018

Leslie Ponto — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 18:42:15 GMT

AAC Legal Challenge to Dry Needling Continues & Conference Registration is Open

Message from the President: Our Legal Challenge to Dry Needling Continues!

Mark VanOtterloo

Dear members, friends and supporters,

While we were disappointed that the Denver District Court recently denied our legal challenge to the PT Board’s regulation allowing dry needling, we strongly disagree with the court’s ruling and, as one of our attorneys explained, “This type of decision is why we have Courts of Appeals.” As a result, at our last meeting, our board unanimously agreed to continue our legal challenge to the Colorado Court of Appeals where we believe we have a strong chance to prevail.

The District Court, for example, claimed we lacked the right to even challenge the PT Board’s refusal to repeal Rule 211 despite making the opposite finding just months earlier. Similarly, the Court did not even attempt to explain how the PT scope of practice, which allows only non-invasive practices, could be rationally interpreted as allowing the insertion of acupuncture needles up to 5” deep.

While we all wanted to see victory at the District Court, the Court of Appeals is a very important second bite at the apple. But it will only be possible if those of us that understand the importance of protecting the public from the untrained practice of acupuncture (aka “Dry Needling”) continue to financially support this critical legal effort.

Your contributions to date have been immensely significant to our efforts, and our attorneys have already generously donated many thousands of dollars of their time. But to continue this fight we need your support again.

If you’re already an AAC member, please make a special donation to directly support the critical work our legal team is doing on your behalf.

DONATE NOW

If you’re not a member, please join the AAC today [link to join us page] and stand with us in this important effort that will be closely watched across the United States. You may also wish to make an additional donation in support of this cause.

JOIN NOW

Please take a minute now and make a donation to our legal fund. This is a fight we can win, but we cannot do it without you.

I look forward to continuing to work with you on this, and to seeing you at our 35th annual conference in April for an awesome seminar with Jeff Nagel . And as always, thank you for your membership and continued support.

Mark VanOtterloo, DAOM, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
president@acucol.com
(720) 295-9323

Registration is Now Open for Jeff Nagel at the 35^th Annual AAC Conference in Westminster April 21-22, 2018!

Erika Schultz

This year will be our 35th annual conference as a state association and we are pleased to bring you another highly requested speaker, Jeff Nagel, MA, LAc, Dipl Ac. Jeff is trained in the 8 Branches of Chinese Daoist Healing Arts, Medicine, Internal Martial Arts & Life Sciences and is an experienced long-time practitioner.

He is a well seasoned, generous teacher-researcher of Acupuncture-Oriental Medicine, as well as a Qigong cultivator and healer who has studied extensively with several well-known masters and doctors including Daoist Grand Master Share K. Lew, the 23rd generation of the Yellow Dragon Monastery, China.

Jeff is designated as a practitioner and teacher by the AAAOM Pioneers & Leaders in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, acknowledging his contributions to the field. He has taught at a number of state, national and international conferences.

Registration is now open for this event on April 21st and 22nd, 2018 at the Westminster Marriott.

His two-day seminar is entitled Healing Stress, Anxiety, Depression & Pain - Precursors to Disease In Your Practice & In Your Life (Classical Chinese Medicine Daoist Style Special Applications of Master Tung's Holographic). 14 NCCAOM PDA / California CEU pending.

“7 parts patient lifestyle adjustment + 3 parts doctor’s treatment”

Teachings include:

How to cultivate Relax & Calm Down Qigong Breathing & Taiji Ruler Heart Calming Qigong for patients and practitioners.
Learn simple & effective methods of Acu-Touch Pulse for diagnosis & treatment.
Learn how to use internal-external herbal polarity-5 phase nutrition.
Learn practical clinical applications to diagnose and treat stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD and pain before dis-ease sets in using Master Tung's Acupuncture and the 5 Phase Organ-Meridians and 12 Attitudes Method.
Learn how to harmonize the emotions with Temporal Pulse Balancing, the “10 Essentials of Life” & Geopathic Medicine for stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD and pain.

We are so excited for this conference, which will be a wonderful opportunity to connect with peers, get energized and learn amazing things. This conference is expected to sell out, so register early and take advantage of early bird pricing discounts. I look forward to seeing you all there!

Kind regards,

Erika Schultz, L.Ac., Dipl. OM, ACN
Conference Chair, AAC Board of Directors
conferencecomm@acucol.com

(720) 460-0766

__________________________________________________

The Winter Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready for Members!

The winter issue, v. 5 no. 1, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now available for AAC members to read on our website! Digital issues of this peer-reviewed, Medline compliant journal are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. Log in to read the Winter issue. (After logging in, scroll down under the Acupuncturists tab to Members, then select Meridians Journal at the bottom of the menu at right.) Having trouble logging in? Contact Charissa at info@acucol.com or (303) 572-8744.

_____________________________________________________

AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Join us now!

Become a Member

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Charissa Haines at the AAC Office at (303) 572-8744
or email at info@acucol.com

Thank you for supporting our advertisers!

The Colorado Acupuncturist – October 2017

Leslie Ponto — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 21:36:23 GMT

Dry Needling Update, Conference, Dāo Needle Class & Other AAC News

Message from the President: Dry Needling & Injection Therapy Updates

Mark VanOtterloo

Dear members, friends and supporters:

On behalf of your volunteer board of directors, we are thankful for your support as we advocate for your right to practice Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) in the state of Colorado and to advance the reputation of Acupuncture as a safe and effective healthcare option. We are informing the public and policy makers with an accurate and unified voice for the practice of TEAM as the use of holistic medicines continues to grow.

We are only as strong as our membership, so please spread the word to your fellow acupuncturists and supporters to join. The membership numbers and donations that we receive from you are the basis of our strength. If you are not yet a member, or your membership has lapsed, please take a moment now to join us.

Join Now

Dry Needling

I am excited to inform you that our lawyers have submitted to the court what we hope will be our final round of legal briefing in our lawsuit to overturn the Colorado PT Board’s rule authorizing dry needling. If we win, Colorado would become the first state to have an existing dry needling regulation legally overturned. We need your help today to raise the funding that we need to see this precedent-setting lawsuit through to the end. While we have already defeated the PT’s Board’s motion to dismiss our case, and also defeated the Physical Therapy Association’s motion to intervene in the case, our final hurdle is to win the court’s agreement that Colorado statute quite simply does not allow physical therapists to insert acupuncture needles. A big thank you to those of you who have already generously donated. If you haven’t yet had a chance, please take a minute now and make a contribution online to protect the safety of Acupuncture patients today and into the future. Also, see the article about the 15 CEU Dāo Needle Certification class later in this newsletter–part of the proceeds will benefit our Legal Fund.

Donate Now

Procuring Substances for Injection Therapy

From 1999 until 2014 acupuncturists were using DORA’s Director's Policy regarding what substances where permissible to use. While some substances were listed, it contained the line: "Injection therapy is the injection of sterile herbs, vitamins, minerals, homeopathics, or other similar-type substances into acupuncture points by means of hypodermic needles." Practitioners and pharmacies had some liberty with "other similar-type substances" when it came to ordering. Now that we are detailing all specific substances, we are running into the issue that specific types of injections that have been used for more than 15 years are now being denied access due to conflicts with Federal law.

In January of this year, we met with DORA regarding this subject and we are attempting to prepare a bill to add limited prescriptive authority to our practice act with the assistance of our new DORA Interim Program Director Abi Gaskins. We have also met with the Colorado Medical Society (CMS) Scope of Practice Subcommittee and are continuing to discuss with them language that will allow us to obtain these substances from FDA regulated outlets. We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress on injectables. Please “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page, click on “Follow” and turn on notifications by hovering over the “Following” button until a drop-down menu appears and select Notifications “All On”.

As always, thank you for your membership and continued support.

Mark VanOtterloo, DAOM, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
president@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

Conference Chair Report: Last Call for Volunteers!

Erika Schultz

This year we will be celebrating our 35th year of bringing Acupuncturists from Colorado and around the country together for learning and connecting. As your new Conference Chairperson I am excited to be leading the charge on this and have been impressed by the enthusiasm expressed by past conference attendees.

Mark your calendar for April 21^st - 22^nd, 2018 when Jeff Nagel, MA, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac. will be our presenter at the 35^th annual conference. Jeff is trained in the 8 Branches of Chinese Daoist Healing Arts, Medicine, Internal Martial Arts and Life Sciences. He is an experienced long-time practitioner, well-seasoned and generous teacher-researcher of AOM, and a Qigong cultivator and healer. People who have learned from Jeff in the past have raved about him, and he was very high on the list of requested instructors by last year’s attendees.

This is an excellent opportunity to get involved. The conference is one of our largest fundraising events all year and we have some even more exciting ideas for increasing these efforts. Do you want to be a part of it? Do you want to make a contribution to the future of acupuncture in your state?

This is our LAST CALL for committee volunteers. We are the verge of forming teams of people who will make an important contribution to this year’s conference. If you want to take part please text your name, email and phone number to me at (720) 460-0766 by Friday October 20th, 2017, and we will include you in our Kick-off Meeting to be scheduled this month.

We expect that his conference will be outstanding on every level, and are looking forward to having you join us.

Kind regards,

Erika Schultz, L.Ac., Dipl. OM, CAN
Conference Chair, AAC Board of Directors
conferencecomm@acucol.com
(720) 460-0766

Dāo Needle Class November 11^th – 12^th in Boulder:
A New Style of Acupuncture and Acupuncture Needle
15 CEUs & A Portion of Class Proceeds
Will Benefit the AAC Legal Fund!

Dāo Needle Therapy is a unique modality that bridges ancient east Asian techniques and modern biomechanical therapies. Its therapeutic basis lies in biomechanical tests to identify musculoskeletal, neuromuscular and fascial imbalances; patient positioning to allow better access to dysfunctional tissue and a more effective treatment; and dynamic palpation to evaluate mobility, motility, and mechanical threshold of tissue. A specialized needle is used to break up scar tissue, change the mechanical threshold of ashi points, remodel tissue and break the muscle energy crisis. Dāo Needle Therapy brings Traditional Chinese Medicine meridian therapy into a new era.

Diagnostic Testing

Participants will learn a variety of advanced musculoskeletal diagnostic tests such as muscle testing, range of motion, movement analysis, functional tests, and advanced dynamic palpation. Participants will explore how to identify, map, and use the fascial system and its corresponding meridians, while developing a deeper understanding of how ashi points can be used as a diagnostic guide and therapeutic meter. Practitioners of Dāo Needle Therapy use biomechanical and postural tests to identify and mark a patient’s ashi points.

Original Modality

After marking a patient’s tender points in a specific area, practitioners insert and quickly remove a specialized needle. It is common that 90% of ashi points will no longer be tender immediately after treatment. The remaining points that are still tender are then needled one more time. This result-driven technique resets neurological responses and restores function to muscles. Dāo Needle Therapy will change the way you see and treat pain.

“I can honestly say that over the last 27 years of study and practice in this medicine, your training ranked high up on my list of all-time favorites. Your enthusiasm is contagious, your knowledge of the subject is broad and deep, and what’s impressive is how I feel after receiving Dāo Needle therapy. Often times, training can be superb, however devoid of real clinical results. This is definitely not the case with Dāo Needle Therapy! I would fully recommend your training series for any practitioner whether they have been in practice 2 days or 40 years."

- Greg Lane, DACM, LAC
Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
Director of Clinical Services, Pacific College of Oriental Medicine
Completed San Diego Dāo Needle Course, 2017

A Unique Needle

Participants will learn the anatomy of the specialized acupuncture needle used in Dāo Needle Therapy. Its unique bevel edge allows for a different penetration into the skin. Similar to Biomedical Acupuncture, Dāo Needle Therapy creates a lesion in the soft tissue that then releases cytokine/chemokine and neuropeptides to initiate local acute inflammation, which activates local blood circulation. However, the needle penetration is very shallow compared to other acupuncture styles and is more focused on the fascial lines, ashi points (tender points), and their corresponding meridians.

Inventor and Instructor

Dāo Needle Therapy® was developed by Brian Bowen, L.Ac., CMT, PAS. He is the founder and owner of Integrative Health Inc., Dāo Needle Therapy®, and Outch Ointment.

During his 19 years in practice, Brian has specialized in musculoskeletal issues, collaborating with osteopaths, chiropractors, manual therapists and postural alignment specialists. He has studied neuro-muscular therapy, structural integration, myofascial release, active release technique, cranial sacral therapy, postural alignment therapy, functional movement repatterning, Dr. Tan method, dry needling, 5-Element and much more.

Please join us at the class and help us thank Brian for his generous offer to donate a portion of the proceeds of this class to the AAC Legal Fund!

Approved for 15 CEUs by NCCAOM and California

AAC Members receive 10% off registration. Discount code is on the Member Benefits page of Acucol.com.

(You must be logged in to see this page, which is under the Members tab of the Acupuncturists heading on the homepage. If you have trouble logging in, please contact Charissa at info@acucol.com (303) 572-8744.)

For questions about the class call (303) 577-9977 or email info@daoneedle.com.

Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AOM) Day is October 24th!

Want a FREE Professionally-Designed Press Release for your clinic?

AOM Day is a great opportunity to raise awareness and generate interest in your practice. But it can only help you if you have the tools to maximize the opportunity. One way to make the most of this national holiday is to submit a PRESS RELEASE to your local news outlets to let them know how you are celebrating, such as with a special offer or event.

I teamed up with Felicia Slattery, Business Communication Coach, to create a professionally designed Press Release Template for AOM Day for my clinic that we are offering absolutely FREE to AAC members.

Don’t miss this easy marketing opportunity! Click here (and be sure you’re logged in) to see the free AOM press release, and adapt it to your clinic's AOM Day offers or activities.

(You must be logged in to see this page, which is under the Members/Membership Benefits tab of the Acupuncturists heading on the homepage. If you have trouble logging in, please contact Charissa at info@acucol.com or (303) 572-8744.)

There are more AOM Day marketing ideas available at http://aomday.org/get.html

We wish you a happy and successful AOM Day!

Erika F. Marie, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac.
Public Relations Chair, AAC Board of Directors
prchair@acucol.com
(720) 593-1593

Support Your “TEAM” by Getting Involved!

Your Volunteer AAC Board of Directors

Would you like to help further Traditional East Asian Medicine (TEAM) in Colorado? Join a committee! Several AAC committees are looking for members interested in helping us advance our profession. Have fun and support your all-volunteer AAC Board of Directors by joining a committee. For example, you could help coordinate the 2018 AAC Conference, assist with Fundraising, help increase Membership, or promote our profession through Public Relations. Contact Charissa, the AAC office manager at info@acucol.com with the subject line: "I want to help!" and she’ll get you to the right committee chairperson.

Call for Featured Guest Articles!

Do you write about Acupuncture or Traditional East Asian Medicine? Would you like to share your knowledge, drive traffic to your blog or clinic, and gain an online publication with us? Starting in January 2018, the AAC newsletter will be monthly instead of quarterly. Each month will include a “Featured Guest Article” written by one of our members. To submit an article, you must be a current dues-paying member of the AAC. To learn more, contact Erika F. Marie, Chair of Public Relations, at prchair@acucol.com with "AAC Featured Guest Article Submission" as your subject line.

Professional Spotlight: AAC PR Chair Presents at International CAM Meeting

Erika Fayina Marie, LAc., MSOM, Dipl. Ac., and AAC Public Relations Chair, traveled to North Carolina on September 18th, 2017, to present her scientific abstract for publication at the 5th International Meeting on Complementary and Alternative Medicine & Therapies. Her abstract and well-received breakout session, “Saving Organs and Restoring Lives with Integrative Medicine: The Treatment of an Infant with Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA) and Her Mother with Immune Dysfunction and Kidney Failure,” illuminated the power of an integrative approach for "unbelievable" clinical results. Erika specializes in autoimmunity and other complex conditions at her clinic, Chiyu Center, located in Longmont, Colorado. She is also a professional speaker and would be happy to speak to your group about how to practice truly remarkable integrative care. Reserve time on her clinic or speaking schedule by calling (720) 593-1593 or emailing erika@chiyucenter.com.

Would you like to be the next AAC member featured in our “Professional Spotlight?” Contact Charissa, the AAC office manager, at info@acucol.com with your spotlight submission of 150 words or less. Don’t forget to include a photograph along with your clinic and contact information! Submit via the body of your email with the subject line: "Professional Spotlight".

The Fall Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready for Members!

The fall issue, v. 4 no. 4, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now available for AAC members to read on our website! Digital issues of this peer-reviewed, Medline compliant journal are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. Log in to read the Fall issue. (After logging in, scroll down under the Acupuncturists tab to Members, then select Meridians Journal at the bottom of the menu at right.) Having trouble logging in? Contact Charissa at info@acucol.com or (303) 572-8744.

Thank You For Supporting Our Advertisers!

The Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2017

Leslie Ponto — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 17:27:01 GMT

Dry Needling Update & Other AAC News

Message from the President: Dry Needling,
PT Board Review, Injection Therapy

Dear members, friends and supporters:

On behalf of your board of directors, we are thankful for your support as we continue to advocate as your voice to protect our right to practice Chinese Medicine in the state of Colorado. We continue to inform the public and policy makers on an accurate and unified voice for the practice of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine as complementary medicines grow. We are very thankful for your membership as we are aware that our profession in Colorado can only be as strong as our members. Please spread the word to your fellow acupuncturists and supporters to join. Your Acupuncture Association of Colorado is only as strong as our numbers of members and the donations that we receive from you.

JOIN NOW

Dry Needling: I have good news for you all– the judge denied CCAPTA's motion to intervene in our legal challenge to the Physical Therapy Board’s regulation allowing dry needling! This was the second positive ruling in our favor so far, following our first win that came when the judge denied the State Physical Therapy Board’s motion to dismiss our case. The case is proceeding and we appreciate those of you who have helped support the case through your donations. (Please see the special thank you further down in this newsletter.) We appreciate your continued support as this case progresses and further legal expenses are incurred.

DONATE NOW

Physical Therapy Sunset Review: As you may be aware, DORA has begun a sunset review of physical therapy. (For those who are not aware, a sunset review is an evaluation of a program or agency by its regulating body. It allows the regulating body to assess the effectiveness and performance of the program or agency and determine the need for its continued existence.) We are working to provide information as a part of this review relating to injuries that have occurred as a result of dry needling since we believe it is important that DORA has an accurate view of patient injury reports. If you are aware of injuries related to dry needling please let us know. Also, if you were not aware, DORA has an online form (below) for reporting any practitioner complaints.

DORA Report a Complaint

Procuring Substances for Injection Therapy: We continue to work on obtaining the right to procure injectables following the passage of our injectables bill last year. The process has been long and intricate, involving several stakeholders and many meetings. This June we participated in a preliminary meeting with the Colorado Medical Society (CMS) Scope of Practice Subcommittee in order to further solidify our ability to procure injectable substances. We will continue to work with the CMS subcommittee to discuss with them the language that will provide more access for Colorado acupuncturists from FDA regulated outlets. We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress on this subject. Please “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page, click on “Follow” and turn on notifications by hovering over the “Following” button until a drop down menu appears and select Notifications “All On”.

As always, thank you for your membership and continued support.

Mark VanOtterloo, DAOM, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
president@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

Conference Report: Important Changes for 2018!

This year’s 34^thAnnual AAC conference with Kiiko Matsumoto was a big success with 137 attendees and 18 exhibitors. Post conference evaluations showed attendees were overall happy with the venue and food again this year. Some people had a hard time understanding Kiiko’s accent. We also experienced problems with the skills of the hotel’s camera crew who were projecting Kiiko’s demonstrations onto large screens. We are always doing our best to provide a quality experience for our attendees and continue to learn how to improve from year to year.

The plan for 2018 has changed, and we ask you all make note of this in your calendars. Due to scheduling conflicts at the Marriott, our conference will be held there on April 21^st-22^nd, 2018, not the following weekend as previously planned. Lonny Jarrett is not able to join us for the new 2018 dates as they fall on his 60^thbirthday. The good news for Lonny Jarrett fans is that we have booked Lonny for 2019. The conference will remain at the Marriott Westminster and be held April 13^th-14^th, 2019.

We are excited to announce that our presenter for 2018 will be Jeff Nagel, MA, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac. Jeff is trained in the 8 Branches of Chinese Daoist Healing Arts, Medicine, Internal Martial Arts and Life Sciences. He is an experienced long-time practitioner, well-seasoned generous teacher-researcher of Acupuncture-Oriental Medicine and a Qigong cultivator and healer. Jeff has studied extensively with several well-known masters and doctors including Daoist Grand Master Share K. Lew, the 23^rd generation of the Yellow Dragon Monastery, China. He is designated as a practitioner and teacher by the AAAOM Pioneers & Leaders in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine acknowledging his contributions to the field.

He has taught at a number of state, national and international conferences. Jeff lives in San Diego, California, where he has a private practice and is the director of and a teacher with the Golden Dragon Health Association offering classes in Classical Chinese Medicine Daoist Style and Qigong around the U.S. and abroad. We expect that his seminar will be outstanding on every level, and look forward to having you join us.

In closing, I have greatly enjoyed my time volunteering for you as Conference Chair for the past four years. It has been my goal to add as much organization as possible to our conference planning so as to offer the best possible venue, education, socializing and networking experiences for you and to help move our medicine forward in Colorado. This year I have taken the position of Treasurer and am passing the baton to Erika Schultz. Please join me in welcoming her.

Kind regards,

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Outgoing Conference Chair / Treasurer
AAC Board of Directors

treasurer@acucol.com
(303) 471-9355

_______________________________________________________

Meet the New Additions to the
AAC Board of Directors

Your AAC Board of Directors does the important work of keeping the organization running and working for all acupuncturists across the state. Board members are volunteers who must be current AAC members, are elected by the membership at our annual conference and serve for a term of three years. The board meets twice per quarter and alternates meetings between Denver and Boulder. A complete listing of our current board is listed on the Board of Directors page of the AAC website.

We are pleased to Introduce the new board members elected in April:

New Vice President, Liz Spetnagel, DAOM, LAc., is the lead acupuncturist for Centura Health Integrative Medicine. In addition to treating patients, she serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Family Medicine Clinic/Residency program at St. Anthony North Health Campus. Liz also practices at St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood as part of the CHPG Breast Center. Liz is focused on expanding acupuncture accessibility for Centura patients, both inpatient and outpatient. Personal goals include creating opportunities for fellow East Asian Medicine practitioners as well as bringing options to mainstream medicine to address the crisis around pain management and opioid addiction. Liz hopes to utilize her skills and position in helping the AAC work towards legislation that would make acupuncture a covered benefit under Medicaid and Medicare.

New Secretary and Membership Chair Linda Machol, MSTOM, L.Ac., had a yoga and meditation background before becoming certified in Integrative Sports Medicine and pain management from Five Branches University. She also trained in China. Her other specialties include Skin Care and treating Infertility. She has two offices, one in Cherry Creek and one in DTC. Linda is an advocate for educating patients and western doctors to help them understand the very important role Asian Medicine and acupuncture can play in our healthcare model today. She believes this education must include that Asian Medicine addresses the whole body concurrently, treating both root and branch and including nutritional/dietary changes along with a blend western modalities for lasting results. Linda is very excited to be a part of realizing the AAC’s vision for Colorado.

New Conference Chair is Erika Schultz, LAc, ACN is passionate about helping people become empowered in their health through nutritional and acupuncture healing. She owns and operates two practices: Paramount Wellness in Denver, CO, and Lakeland Acupuncturist in Pinckney, MI. In Denver as the only advanced trained practitioner in a customized nutritional therapy called Nutrition Response Testing she specializes in identifying and addressing root causes of un-resolving chronic health conditions. In Pinckney, MI, her objective alongside two other associate acupuncturists is to make an impact on the increasing reliance on opioid medications by providing private and community style acupuncture treatments to the community. As Conference Chair, Erika hopes to increase knowledge, advocacy and comradery amongst acupuncturists in the state of Colorado.

New Public Relations Chair Erika Fayina Marie, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac., is a licensed acupuncturist in Colorado and Oregon, an Integrative Medicine Consultant, and a Traditional Usui Shiki Ryoho Reiki Master. At her Chiyu Center in Longmont she specializes in reversing auto-immunity and complex disease and restoring health of both adults and children. In patient care, Erika draws upon her training in Classical Chinese Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tan-style Acupuncture, Kiiko Matsumoto Acupuncture, Five-Element Acupuncture, Naturopathic Iris Evaluation, Shonishin and more. She also holds certification in Constitutional Facial Acupuncture. Prior to her medical career, Erika graduated the United States Military Academy at West Point, where she earned a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Engineering Psychology in 2002. During this time, she designed, analyzed, and conducted multiple randomized-controlled trials. Erika is excited to spearhead important integrative medicine initiatives and promote the safety and proper regulation of acupuncture as a time-honored and effective medicine.

New Board Member Sandi Lyman, Dipl. Ac., L.Ac. is the owner of MAI Acupuncture Clinic in Buena Vista, Colorado. Working in a rural area brings everything through the door: from 4th generation ranchers to couples looking to start a family. Specializing in digestive troubles, hormone balance, and pain management, Sandi loves helping the people of the High Rocky Mountain Region feel their best. Before studying acupuncture, Sandi worked for over 10 years in healthcare policy as a consumer advocate and communications specialist. She looks forward to using these skills to help the AAC to increase public interest and insurance coverage for acupuncture.

New Student Representative Cherron Dow-Chacon is a student in her last year at the Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Denver. She eagerly awaits her graduation in the spring when she hopes to begin her work bringing this amazing medicine to women of all social and economic classes. Cherron received her BS in Physiology from the University of Arizona and has a unique background in western science and patient care. She joined the board as the second student member this year to assist the other wonderful student member, Brittany Chowning, and because she believes in the work the AAC is doing and thinks more students should get involved!

_______________________________________________________

A Special Thank you to Our Donors

The AAC is grateful to every single person who has donated time, effort and money to support our Legal Fund. Our endeavors to protect and further the safe and legal practice of acupuncture in Colorado would not be possible without all of us coming together and contributing however we can. We would like to recognize here a special group of donors who have generously supported us this year with Gold and Platinum donations. Every effort was made to contact donors for permission to use their names, so please forgive us if we somehow missed you.

Platinum donors $500+

Michael Lay - Uptown Acupuncture, Denver
Anonymous Donor – CSTCM, Denver
Anonymous Donor – Minneapolis, MN

Gold Donors $250+

Allison Suddard Briggs - Performance Acupuncture, Evergreen
Andrew Maloney - Jade Mountain Health, Boulder
Carol LeCroy - Acupuncture Plus, Denver
Dayna Larson - Traditional Chinese Medical Clinic, Fort Collins
Karen Marks - Alpenglow Acupuncture, Wheat Ridge
Patty Polman - Jing Japanese Acupuncture, Denver

3 Anonymous Donors – Boulder
3 Anonymous Donors – Denver
Anonymous Donor – Broomfield
Anonymous Donor – Cedaredge
Anonymous Donor – Conifer
Anonymous Donor – Colorado Springs
Anonymous Donor – Littleton
Anonymous Donor – SWAC, Boulder

Big thanks also go out to the following members of the AAC Board of Directors who donated not only dollars, but also many hours of their time in calling acupuncturists across the state asking for support of the AAC and our Legal Fund:

Kimberley Benjamin, Brittney Chowning, Mark Costello, George Graf, Kristen Grayce McGary, Yvonne Piper, Scott Richardson, Robin Schiesser, Stephanie Shober, Mark VanOtterloo

Donate Now

_______________________________________________________

The Summer Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready for Members!

The summer issue, v. 4 no.3, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now available for AAC members to read on our website! Digital issues of this peer-reviewed, Medline compliant journal are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. Log in to read the Summer issue. (After logging in, scroll down under the Acupuncturists tab to Members, then select Meridians Journal at the bottom of the menu at right.) Having trouble logging in? Contact Charissa at info@acucol.com or (303) 572-8744.

Meridians Journal Clinical Pearls Call for Submissions

Topic for the Winter 2018 Issue: How do you treat complex regional pain syndrome in your clinic?

Practitioners: Please submit your short (approx. 500 words) Clinical Pearl on this topic by or before Nov 1, 2017. See the Meridians Journal website for details.

AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Join us now!

Become a Member

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Charissa Haines at the AAC Office at (303) 572-8744
or email at info@acucol.com

Thank you for supporting our advertisers!

The Colorado Acupuncturist - April 2017

Leslie Ponto — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 01:06:06 GMT

Last Day to Register for Kiiko Matsumoto at the 34th Annual AAC Conference is Sunday, April 16th!

Stephanie Shober

Kiiko Matsumoto

Don't miss this opportunity to connect with more than 120 of your colleagues April 22nd - 23rd as we learn from world-renowned acupuncturist Kiiko Matsumoto. There are so many reasons to join in:

The AAC is offering member registration fees at a steep discount compared to standard Kiiko Matsumoto classes. Our member regular rate is $300 where normal rates to learn from Kiiko range between $365 - $419!
OR save even more money by registering with a friend. The Buy One Get One Half Price offer means getting 14 NCCAOM approved PDAs from this TCM master for only $225 apiece!
The 2017 Exhibitor Hall has more Exhibitors than ever! Come see the latest TCM tools, technology, supplies and resources from eighteen organizations.
AND, we have a game this year: Any attendee who visits every Exhibitor booth will be entered into a drawing to win a FREE CASE OF SEIRIN NEEDLES - a $100 value!
Our venue, the beautiful Marriott Westminster, has a fresh farm to table kitchen. Each day attendees enjoy a complimentary, delicious soup and salad bar luncheon.
Saturday Evening's Complimentary Wine and Beer Reception will be just as big a hit this year as it was last year!
Dr. Dave's is back! Have fun bidding on several different Dr. Dave's tinctures at the Silent Auction table.

We are so excited for this conference, which will be a wonderful opportunity to connect with peers, get energized and learn amazing things. We will also be holding elections for the board of directors at our annual meeting on Saturday (see article below). I look forward to seeing you all there!

Kind regards,
Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Conference Chair, AAC Board of Directors
conferencecomm@acucol.com
(303) 471-9355

Message from the President: Dry Needling, Injection Therapy, ASA National Organization

Dear members, friends and supporters:

Dry Needling Update: As we expected, last month the State Physical Therapy Board moved to dismiss the case we filed in February on procedural grounds and is doing everything possible to avoid a substantive ruling from the court on whether dry needling is within the statutory scope of physical therapy as defined by the Legislature. Just this week the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) also filed documents asking to intervene in the case and filed a proposed procedural motion of their own to dismiss the case. AAC’s legal team filed a great brief this week opposing the motion to dismiss the case and will continue working hard to get a court ruling on the substance of whether the Colorado Legislature ever intended to let physical therapists insert acupuncture needles into their patients.

If you’re already an AAC member, please make a special donation today and help support our efforts to enforce Colorado law! Many of you have already been generous in your donations and we thank you for your contributions.

Donate Now

If you’re not a member, please join the AAC today and stand with us in this important effort that will be closely watched across the United States. We are only as strong as the support we receive from our members and friends.

Procuring Substances for Injection Therapy: Following the passage of our injection therapy bill last spring we had many meetings with DORA about making the necessary rules. DORA did prepare and sign into effect a list of allowed injectable substances, rules for training and changes to the pharmacy practice act that were intended to enable us to purchase injectable substances again. Details can be found in the January 2016 newsletter archived under the News/Classes tab of acucol.com. Unfortunately, according to federal law many injectables considered compounded require a patient-specific prescription, and this is still hindering our ability to procure substances. We may need to pass a bill next session to get prescriptive authority just for these substances. We have met with the lobbyist from the Colorado Medical Society, but will need to present proposed language to their Scope of Practice committee in May. Also, Lorraine Lucero has recently replaced Leanne Duffy as the Acupuncture Program Director at DORA. Our legislative committee will continue researching a possible bill giving us prescriptive authority with the goal of resolving our issues in procuring substances for Injection Therapy. We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress on this subject. Please “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page, click on “Follow” and turn on notifications by hovering over the “Following” button until a drop down menu appears and select Notifications “All On”.

American Society of Acupuncturists: Vice President Mark Van Otterloo and I represented the AAC membership at the annual ASA meeting last month in Philadelphia, PA. The meeting was very productive and we were able to collaborate with other national entities including the NCCAOM, CCAOM, and ACAOM. The ASA continues to have a representative on the CPT code committee and is tracking items that impact Acupuncturists. As an AAC member you are automatically a member of the ASA. One of the many benefits of this is that you have free access to the peer-reviewed Meridians Journal of AOM in the member’s area of the AAC website. The ASA is proving to be a valuable asset to our organization and it is representing us well at a national and even global level. We hope you see the value in it, too. In light of this, with your approval we will raise membership dues slightly next year to account for our ASA membership, the cost of which is based in part on how many members we have. Because our relationship with the ASA is a non-competing model, the increase will be a very small amount compared to joining a separate national organization ($5-$10 instead of $100). Please visit their new website at www.asacu.com to see the many resources available and read their second annual report.

Just one great benefit of our ASA membership is that you can read issues of the peer-reviewed, Medline-compliant Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine for free in the member area of our website. Once you are logged in to acucol.com, go to the dropdown menu under Acupuncturists to Members and a dropdown menu will appear on the right, with Meridians Journal at the bottom. The Spring 2017 issue is now available!

Thank you for your membership. There is strength in numbers and although there are roughly 1300 licensed acupuncturists in Colorado, only about 20 percent are AAC members. Our volunteer organization works on behalf of ALL acupuncturists and is hindered by lack of funds caused by low membership, so it is important to let our colleagues know we need them to join us in order to enable us to keep working with DORA and the legislature, and to educate the public about the benefits of choosing a trained, qualified acupuncturist.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

The AAC Needs You: Serve on the AAC Board
Elections are on April 22nd!

The AAC Board of Directors is looking for a few good volunteers to round out our dedicated board team. Our board does the important work of keeping the organization running and working for all acupuncturists across the state. We are supported by a part-time office manager as well as bookkeepers/accountants and we retain a lobbyist for legislative issues, but the direction of the organization and all decisions are made by the volunteer board composed of acupuncturists like you. Board members must be current members and are elected by the membership to serve for a term of three years. We meet once or twice per quarter and alternate meetings between Denver and Boulder.

Why is it important to take a turn serving on the board? Here are just a few reasons:

The board is dedicated to protecting and furthering the safety and reputation of Acupuncture for the benefit of practitioners and patients, as currently evidenced by our recent pursuit of a petition to the Physical Therapy Board.

Without our organization acupuncturists may have lost the right to be licensed in Colorado. Thanks to our membership and board, led by then Legislative Chair Anne Chew, we were able to work with a lobbyist to get our Practice Act Sunset Review passed in 2012. If we had become de-regulated it would have been a huge step backward for our profession as we would no longer be licensed in Colorado and could not obtain malpractice insurance or bill health insurance companies.

We have much more work to do in supporting practitioners and educating the public and prospective patients. We need more person power to coordinate participation in health fairs and other public relations opportunities.

What are the benefits to serving on the board?

Feel good knowing you are contributing to furthering your profession while having fun getting to know and working alongside fellow acupuncturists.

Be “in the know” and have your finger on the pulse of the current issues facing our profession on the state and national level.

Get free registration to the annual AAC conference (including the 14 CEUs) as well as any class that is sponsored by the AAC.

Receive PDA credits toward NCCAOM recertification for serving your profession when your term is complete.

Learn from and receive referrals from fellow board members.

Elections for new board members will be held at the AAC annual meeting during lunch at our conference on Saturday, April 22nd. You need not be registered or present at the conference to run for the board. If you are interested please contact President Kimberley Benjamin at President@acucol.com or (970) 214-6683.

Get Your "Acupuncture Over Opioids" Stickers!

We know that acupuncture is a powerful tool to treat chronic pain and address the current painkiller epidemic. At the AAC Conference next weekend for a donation to the AAC Legal Fund you can get one or more "Acupuncture Over Opioids" UV-resistant stickers to spread the word about our medicine. Look for the stickers at the registration table!

AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Join us now!

Become a Member

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Charissa Haines at the AAC Office at (303) 572-8744
or email at info@acucol.com

Thank you for supporting our advertisers!

The Colorado Acupuncturist - January 2017 Edition

Leslie Ponto — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 17:09:18 GMT

AAC Files Legal Petition to Repeal Dry Needling Rule & Registration is Open for Kiiko Matsumoto!

Kimberley Benjamin, AAC President

Dear members, friends and supporters:

I am pleased to announce that the Acupuncture Association of Colorado (AAC) and the Colorado Safe Acupuncture Association (CSAA) filed a legal petition in December to repeal the Colorado Physical Therapy Board’s regulation allowing physical therapists to practice acupuncture with almost no training or clinical experience. We do not believe this regulation is legal since nothing in the PT scope of practice adopted by the Colorado Legislature allows the insertion of acupuncture needles or other invasive devices. Since 2012 Rule 211 has claimed that physical therapists can engage in “dry needling” with a mere 46 hours of training. After seeing the results, such as the Olympic skier who received a pneumothorax during a Colorado “dry needling” session, the AAC and the CSAA believe we must take action to protect public safety and acupuncture’s hard won reputation as a safe and effective practice.

For this legal effort succeed we need your help today.

If you’re already an AAC member, please make a special donation to directly support the critical work our legal team is doing on your behalf.

If you’re not a member, please join the AAC today and stand with us in this important effort that will be closely watched across the United States. You may also wish to make an additional donation in support of this cause.

Please, help us meet our goal of raising $25,000 in the next 30 days by making a donation today of $1000, $500, $250 or whatever you can afford. Consider donating a day’s income from your clinic or even just the cost of one treatment. We are only as strong as the support we receive from our members and friends.

Click Here to Donate

Professional and student members can read a copy of the AAC and CSAA’s legal petition from the Acupuncturists dropdown menu of our website. (You must be logged into the website to see this page. If you have trouble logging in, please contact Charissa at info@acucol.com or (303) 572-8744. Your membership may have lapsed when we moved to the new membership platform last year.)

You let us know that this is an important issue to you and we are working hard to address it. This fundraising effort is being spearheaded entirely by your volunteer board of directors, eleven acupuncturists who, like you, care about the safety of patients and the future of acupuncture in our state. You may be receiving a call from a board member asking for your support. We also need help making calls to the 1400 acupuncturists in the state. If you would like to help in this effort, please contact me or Fundraising Chair (and President Emeritus) Scott Richardson at fundraisingchair@acucol.com or 720-974-0392.

Thank you to so many of you who have already committed to support this effort, we have a real opportunity to set a national precedent that protects patients and the future of acupuncture in Colorado and beyond. Along with the AAC, the mission of the CSAA is to work with newly licensed acupuncturists and acupuncture students to promote, encourage and advocate for the safe and effective practice of acupuncture in Colorado in a manner that protects public health and safety. If you would like to become a member of the Colorado Safe Acupuncture Association, please contact Kristin Grayce McGary at safe.needles@gmail.com or (928) 213-4311.

I look forward to working with you on this, and to seeing you at our 34th annual conference in April for an awesome seminar with Kiiko Matsumoto! And as always, thank you for your membership and continued support.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

Registration is Now Open for Kiiko Matsumoto at the 34^th annual AAC Conference in Westminster April 22-23, 2017!

Stephanie Shober Kiiko Matsumoto

The AAC is pleased to announce that registration is now open for Kiiko Matsumoto at our 34^th annual conference April 22^nd and 23^rd, 2017 at the Westminster Marriott. Her two-day seminar is entitled Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex and 9-Star Energy (14 NCCAOM PDA / California CEU pending).

Kiiko Matsumoto was the most requested presenter in the AAC’s 2016 conference attendee evaluations, so we were very happy to make this happen. Additionally, this year our conference will have two 9-foot by 12-foot presentation screens showing live video of Kiiko for all of her instruction and demonstrations to ensure all attendees can easily see what is happening onstage. We have been able to arrange for this audio/visual upgrade and still offer an AAC-member registration fee that is more than $100 less than the usual fee for a Kiiko Matsumoto seminar.

About the class:

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is an area of the brain that has recently been the subject of research in chronic pain conditions. Using fMRI imaging to study this part of the brain, Western Medicine researchers have shown that patients with chronic pain have less density in the DLPFC compared to healthy individuals. While the initial cause of the pain may be confined to the site of injury, i.e. low back or knee or wrist – this is where the person feels the pain – over time the communication between the area of injury and the brain becomes part of the chronic-pain-complex. Understanding this connection allows for new treatments and better understanding of chronic pain. In addition, this area also corresponds with mood disorders that often accompany chronic pain such as anxiety, fear and depression.

Using her research into the acupuncture points located in this area of the head, Kiiko Matsumoto found a strong connection between modern understanding of the DLPFC and Classical Chinese medicine. Looking into the etymological development of the ancient Chinese characters used to name points in the region of the DLPFC, she has been able to devise powerful and effective treatment strategies for a wide variety of chronic pain conditions. Through practical experience she also discovered a close relationship between the treatment of this area and changes in symptoms for patients with digestive disorders such as IBS, Crohn’s and more. During her workshop, she will share her discoveries and treatment strategies as well as demonstrate how to apply them.

Kind regards,
Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Conference Chair, AAC Board of Directors
conferencecomm@acucol.com
(303) 471-9355

______________________________________________

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Colorado Acupuncturist - October 2016 Edition

Leslie Ponto — Sun, 16 Oct 2016 23:07:52 GMT

Message from the President:
Website is Live, Dry Needling &
Strategic Partnerships

Kimberley Benjamin

Happy Fall, everyone!

Your volunteer board is working diligently on your behalf and continues to meet regularly at CSTCM in Denver, with board members that travel from as far as Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. We could use more help and welcome member participation, so if you would like to join us, please check our Facebook page for meeting event announcements or contact board Secretary Robin Schiesser at secretary@acucol.com or 720-432-5373.

NEW WEBSITE IS LIVE!

The new AAC website is up and running! We would like it to be a useful resource for you, and it is still a work in progress. If there is something you would like to see that is missing, please let us know. After we transferred the member data to the new site you may have received a notice to renew your membership before it was due. Thank you for your patience as we iron out the kinks in the system.

If you have have not had a chance to log in to the new site yet, please do so at your earliest convenience to make sure your directory profile appears as you would like it to and that your information is correct. The public can search this directory by type of treatment, technique, specialty or keyword under Find an Acupuncturist. On the new site you can make changes to your profile immediately without waiting for them to go through the AAC office manager. If you have any questions or difficulties please contact Charissa at info@acucol.com or 303-572-8744 for assistance.

DRY NEEDLING

We would like to thank everyone who donated and made pledges to our legal fund at our annual conference last April. Our attorney is making great strides in his research of the best options to address dry needling in Colorado. We appreciate your support in helping us with the attorney fees, which are adding up in spite of his generously providing us with a substantial discount. If you still need to pay your pledge or would like to donate, every dollar helps. If you are paying a pledge, please note that in the comment box provided.

Click Here to Donate

On the national level, the American Society of Acupuncture (ASA) of which you are a member by virtue of your AAC membership, recently adopted a policy regarding dry needling. Read the policy here.This policy joins a growing list released by organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. These policies are helpful in educating our patients and the public about safe needling.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

Last month Past President Scott Richardson and I presented along with other AAC board members to Charlie Sheffield, executive director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans and five major health insurance carriers. Our presentation included our extensive training as acupuncturists and the clinical and cost effectiveness of acupuncture in the treatment of various conditions such as migraines, chronic pain, substance abuse and depression. We are planning further meetings with individual insurance companies to continue to promote acupuncture as a viable and reimbursable benefit for their customers. Scott is also continuing to develop our relationship with Colorado Insurance Commissioner Marguerite Salazar to pursue expansion of coverage for acupuncture services.

ASA UPDATE

The American Society of Acupuncture Board of Directors will be present at Pacific Symposium in San Diego October 25 - 30, 2016 to build professional community relationships as it is one of the largest national events for our community. If you are attending the symposium, feel free to introduce yourself to ASA board members as an AAC member (and therefore an ASA member) and let them know your priorities for our profession.

The ASA website is in beta. We will announce the site when it is live so you can stay in touch with the activities of this vital national organization and the benefits it provides us as members. See the announcement below about reading the Meridians Journal on the new AAC website.

The 2017 Annual Meeting for the ASA is scheduled for March 17 & 18, 2017 in Philadelphia, PA. The AAC will send two delegates to represent Colorado in the business conducted at the meeting.

ELECTION 2016

No matter who you support in this critical election year it is important to exercise your right to vote. Make sure that you are registered! Please see the article below and consider volunteering for candidates who support acupuncture in these last few crucial weeks before the election. Our combined efforts are necessary to successfully represent and further our profession. Thank you for your time and energy.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

Colorado State Elections:
2016 Voter and Volunteer Guide

George Graf

The fall 2016 general election is less than a month away, but it is not too late to connect and volunteer for state senate and state house representative candidates.

There are many tight legislative races in Colorado this general election and the AAC is doing all we can for state legislative candidates who advocate for acupuncturists. We are asking you, AAC members, to contact campaigns in your districts and give your time by phone banking, giving a personal money contribution or canvassing neighborhoods. This would be great exposure for us professionally and can really make a difference for these legislative campaigns that operate on shoestring budgets. Representative Pete Lee in House District 18 shared with me that the best contribution a volunteer can make is walking the district and knocking on doors.

An election is not the best time to bend our candidates’ ears about the issues we are facing. Our best approach is to introduce ourselves as acupuncturists who are supporting them, expressing an interest in learning more about their platform. They will remember us and our efforts when they are in office, and be more open to hearing from us when they are in a position to help.

Though we have had bipartisan support for certain legislative bills, the AAC generally supports the Democratic candidates as historically they have overwhelmingly been the proponents of issues surrounding the acupuncture profession.

Below are the candidates in key races that you can contact. To determine what is your senate and house district go to www.ballotpedia.org.

Senate District 19 features a candidate rematch in a closely divided district. Incumbent state Sen. Laura Woods (R) is running for re-election. She faces former state Sen. Rachel Zenzinger (D) in November. Rachel Zenzinger is a proponent of acupuncture. The AAC supports Rachel Zenzinger. You can contact Rachel at 7725 Marshall St., Arvada, CO 80003, (303) 748-0770, RachelforColorado@Gmail.com, http://www.rachelforcolorado.com

Senate District 25 features an open seat in a swing district. Incumbent state Sen. Mary Hodge (D) is not running for re-election due to term limits. Former state Rep. Kevin Priola (R) faces former state Rep. Jenise May (D) in November. Denise has served on the Finance Committee and Public Health Care and Human Services. The AAC supports Jenise May and she can be contacted going to http://jenisemay.com

State House District 30 the Republican incumbent is running for re-election in a swing district. Incumbent state Rep. JoAnn Windholz (R) is running for re-election. She faces Dafna Michaelson Jenet (D) in November. In 2014, Windholz narrowly defeated Jenise May (D), the former incumbent, by a margin of 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent.

According to the Colorado Independent, the district is one of two races that could determine which party controls the state House (District 31 is the other notable race).

The AAC supports Dafna Michaelson Jenet. Dafna can be contacted by going to http://dafnaforcolorado.com

State House District 31The Democratic incumbent is running for re-election in a swing district. Incumbent state Rep. Joe Salazar (D) is running for re-election. He faces Jessica Sandgren (R) in November.In 2014, Salazar narrowly defeated his Republican opponent by a margin of 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent. The AAC supports Joe Salazar and Joe can be contacted by going to www.salazarforhd31.com

Other races are not as tight but they still need our help, below is the list of retiring incumbents with seats up for grabs:

Senate Partisan Breakdown: Democratic Party (17) Republican Party (18)

Incumbent state senators that are NOT running for re-election in 2016. Those incumbents are:

Incumbent not running			AAC General Election Candidate
Mark Scheffel	Republican	Senate District 4	Christina Riegel
Rollie Heath	Democrat	Senate District 18	Stephen Fenberg
Jessie Ulibarri	Democrat	Senate District 21	Dominick Moreno
Linda Newell	Democrat	Senate District 26	Daniel Kagan
Morgan Carroll	Democrat	Senate District 29	Rhonda Fields
Pat Steadman	Democrat	Senate District 31	Lois Court
Michael Johnston	Democrat	Senate District 33	Angela Williams

Colorado House of Representatives elections, 2016

House Partisan Breakdown: Democratic Party (34) Republican Party (31)

Incumbent representatives that are NOT running for re-election in 2016. Those incumbents are:

Incumbent not running			AAC General Election Candidate
Daniel Kagan	Democrat	House District 3	Jeff Bridges
Beth McCann	Democrat	House District 8	Leslie Herod
Max Tyler	Democrat	House District 23	Christopher Louis Kennedy
Dominick Moreno	Democrat	House District 32	Adrienne Benavidez
Dianne Primavera	Democrat	House District 33	Matt Gray
Su Ryden	Democrat	House District 36	Mike Weissman
Kathleen Conti	Republican	House District 38	Robert Bowen
Rhonda Fields	Democrat	House District 42	Dominique Jackson
Brian DelGrosso	Republican	House District 51	Jody Shadduck-McNall
Kevin Priola	Republican	House District 56	Matthew Snider
Edward Vigil	Democrat	House District 62	Donald Valdez

Source: www.ballotpedia.org

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me. No matter who you support, please get out and vote—your voice matters!! Thank you for your time and efforts.

George Graf, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Legislative Committee Chair
LegislativeComm@acucol.com

Reminder: Kiiko Matsumoto at the
34^th Annual AAC Conference

Stephanie Shober Kiiko Matsumoto

We’d like to remind you that Kiiko Matsumoto will be joining us for our 34^th annual conference, which will be held April 22-23, 2017, once again at the beautiful Marriott Westminster. Watch for our announcement when registration opens in early 2017.

Kiiko Matsumoto is the founder of Kiiko Style Acupuncture and is considered to be a "living Master of Acupuncture". She is well known for her ability to integrate the work of some of the most famous Japanese masters into her practice for the last three decades. Her style of acupuncture focuses on treating the root cause with emphasis on the entire body rather than a single symptom. As a result, patients find Kiiko's treatments to be effective and long lasting.

Her dedication to researching and understanding the Chinese medical classics makes her one of the foremost authorities on the subject of acupuncture. Kiiko's passion for sharing her research makes her a popular and sought after teacher. Her students find her seminars to be practical, fun and dynamic.

Conference attendees were so pleased with this year’s presenter, Lonny Jarrett, that we are bringing him back April 28-29, 2018. Mark your calendars!

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Conference Committee Chair
ConferenceComm@acucol.com

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Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2016 Edition

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 22:38:32 GMT

Message from the President: New Website, Dry Needling, and Strategic Partnerships

Kimberley Benjamin

Happy summer, everyone!

Your volunteer board is working hard on your behalf throughout these warm days, and continues to meet regularly. If you would like to join us, please check our Facebook page for meeting event announcements.

NEW WEBSITE

Our new website is under construction and the website committee is dedicated to providing you with a helpful site as well as one that will be informative for the public, including a user-friendly searchable list of member acupuncturists.

Please look out for an email this weekend asking you to reset your password for the website. The email will be coming from AAOC@wildapricot.org, but the reply-to email will be info@acucol.com. Your username will be your email address. The front end of the site will not look different until the back end is complete, so don’t be alarmed that it looks the same. We will send you another email when the new site is live. In the meantime please sign in and update your information when you receive the email this weekend.

DRY NEEDLING

I would like to thank everyone who donated and made pledges to our legal fund at our annual conference. Our attorney is continuing to research the best options to address dry needling in Colorado. We appreciate your support in helping us with the attorney fees, which are adding up in spite of his generously providing us with a substantial discount. If you would like to donate, every dollar helps.

On the national level, The American Medical Association adopted a policy regarding dry needling at their recent annual meeting. “Lax regulation and nonexistent standards surround this invasive practice. For patients’ safety, practitioners should meet standards required for licensed acupuncturists and physicians,” AMA Board Member Russell W. H. Kridel, M.D. said in a press release.

The official policy reads: RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association recognize dry needling as an invasive procedure and maintain that dry needling should only be performed by practitioners with standard training and familiarity with routine use of needles in their practice, such as licensed medical physicians and licensed acupuncturists.

Additionally, the American Society of Acupuncture (of which you are a member by virtue of your AAC membership) is working on a statement regarding dry needling that is expected to be released soon. Please watch our Facebook page.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

Last month past AAC President and current Director-at-Large Scott Richardson and I met with the Colorado Medical Society to continue finding ways our organizations can support each other. This advantageous relationship began during our efforts to pass our injectables bill and update pharmacy policies so that we could regain the ability to procure injectable substances. (If you missed the announcement—the DORA Director has signed the policy and trained individuals may once again obtain injectable substances from Colorado pharmacies.)

Scott, along with Vice President Mark VanOtterloo, Legislative Chair George Graf and Public Relations Chair Kristin Grayce McGary also met with Charlie Sheffield, executive director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans, to build relationships and work toward greater reimbursement of acupuncture in Colorado. Mr. Sheffield will facilitate further meetings with insurance carriers so we can educate them about how licensed acupuncturists can help with various health concerns.

OPIOID CRISIS

In both of the aforementioned meetings we also addressed the very current topic of opioid overuse and abuse, and how acupuncture can help with this crisis by treating chronic pain and addiction, which is both concerning to physicians and costly to insurers.

The Acupuncture Society of America in cooperation with NCCAOM and the Acupuncture Now Foundation has issued an information sheet on the benefits of using acupuncture to address America’s painkiller epidemic. You can see the info sheet here:

AcupunctureBeforeOpioids_ver2.0

Lastly, 2016 is an election year, so please see the article below about volunteering for candidates who support acupuncture. Our combined efforts are necessary to successfully represent and further our profession. Thank you for contributing your time and your precious Qi!

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

President, AAC Board of Directors

President@acucol.com

(970) 214-6683

___________________________

Colorado State Elections: 2016 Voter and Volunteer Guide

George Graf

The fall 2016 general election is imminent, now is the time to connect and volunteer for state senators and state house representatives.

There are many tight legislative races in Colorado this general election and the AAC is doing all we can for state legislative candidates who advocate for acupuncturists. We are asking you, AAC members, to contact campaigns in your districts and give your time by phone banking, giving a personal money contribution or canvassing neighborhoods. (Please see the table later in this article.) This would be great exposure for us professionally and can really make a difference for these legislative campaigns that operate on shoestring budgets. Representative Pete Lee in House District 18 shared with me that the best contribution a volunteer can make is walking the district and knocking on doors.

Below are the candidates in key races that you can contact. To determine what is your senate and house district go towww.ballotpedia.org.

According to the Colorado Independent, the district is one of two races that could determine which party controls the state House (District 31 is the other notable race)

The AAC supports Dafna Michaelson Jenet. Dafna can be contacted going to http://dafnaforcolorado.com

State House District 31 The Democratic incumbent is running for re-election in a swing district.

Incumbent state Rep. Joe Salazar (D) is running for re-election. He faces Jessica Sandgren (R) in November In 2014, Salazar narrowly defeated his Republican opponent by a margin of 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent.

The AAC supports Joe Salazar and Joe can be contacted going to http://www.salazarforhd31.com/

Other races are not as tight but they still need our help, below is the list of retiring incumbents with seats up for grabs:

Senate Partisan Breakdown: Democratic Party (17) Republican Party (18)

Incumbent state senators that are NOT running for re-election in 2016. Those incumbents are:

Incumbent not running			AAC General Election Candidate
Mark Scheffel	Republican	Senate District 4	Christina Riegel
Rollie Heath	Democrat	Senate District 18	Stephen Fenberg
Jessie Ulibarri	Democrat	Senate District 21	Dominick Moreno
Linda Newell	Democrat	Senate District 26	Daniel Kagan
Morgan Carroll	Democrat	Senate District 29	Rhonda Fields
Pat Steadman	Democrat	Senate District 31	Lois Court
Michael Johnston	Democrat	Senate District 33	Angela Williams

Colorado House of Representatives elections, 2016

House Partisan Breakdown: Democratic Party (34) Republican Party (31)

Incumbent representatives that are NOT running for re-election in 2016. Those incumbents are:

Incumbent not running			AAC General Election Candidate
Daniel Kagan	Democrat	House District 3	Jeff Bridges
Beth McCann	Democrat	House District 8	Leslie Herod
Max Tyler	Democrat	House District 23	Christopher Louis Kennedy
Dominick Moreno	Democrat	House District 32	Adrienne Benavidez
Dianne Primavera	Democrat	House District 33	Matt Gray
Su Ryden	Democrat	House District 36	Mike Weissman
Kathleen Conti	Republican	House District 38	Robert Bowen
Rhonda Fields	Democrat	House District 42	Dominique Jackson
Brian DelGrosso	Republican	House District 51	Jody Shadduck-McNall
Kevin Priola	Republican	House District 56	Matthew Snider
Edward Vigil	Democrat	House District 62	Donald Valdez

Source: www.ballotpedia.org

If you have questions, please feel free to contact me. Thank you for your time and efforts.

George Graf, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

Legislative Committee Chair

LegislativeComm@acucol.com

_________________________

Kiiko Matsumoto at the 34^th Annual AAC Conference

Stephanie Shober

We are so excited that Kiiko Matsumoto will be joining us for our

34^thannual conference, which will be held April 22-23, 2017, once again at the beautiful Marriott Westminster.

Kiiko Matsumoto is the founder of Kiiko Style of Acupuncture and is considered to be a “living Master of Acupuncture”. She is well known for her ability to integrate the work of some of the most famous Japanese masters into

Kiiko Matsumoto

her practice for the last three decades. Her style of acupuncture focuses on treating the root cause with emphasis on the entire body rather than a single symptom. As a result, patients find Kiiko’s treatments to be effective and long lasting.

Her dedication to researching and understanding the Chinese medical classics makes her one of the foremost authorities on the subject of acupuncture. Kiiko’s passion for sharing her research makes her a popular and sought after teacher. Her students find her seminars to be practical, fun and dynamic.

Conference attendees were so pleased with this year’s presenter, Lonny Jarrett, that we are bringing him back April 28-29, 2018. Mark your calendars!

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

Conference Committee Chair

ConferenceComm@acucol.com

_______________

Your Free Summer Issue of the Meridians Journal is Ready for Download!

The summer issue, v. 3 no. 3, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now online! This and all issues of the peer-reviewed, Medline compliant journal are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. To access your download just click on “Register” to create a new account at their website and self-certify that you are a member of a State Association. You will be able to place an “order” for the zero-cost PDF downloads. You do not have to do this for each issue, just the first time. After initially registering, all you have to do is log in when a new issue is uploaded.

If you have any questions about access to the online issues, please feel free to contact the webmaster, Brian Smither, atwebmaster@meridiansjaom.com. He will be happy to assist you so you can read this issue and all issues of Meridians JAOM.

Clinical Pearls Call for Submissions

Topic for our Fall 2016 Issue: How Do You Treat Cuts, Abrasions and Local Infections in Your Clinic?

Practitioner, please submit your short (approx. 500 words) Clinical Pearl on this topic by or before August 1, 2016.

View the Submission Details at the MJAOM website and submit to: cpeditor@meridiansjaom.com

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Colorado Acupuncturist - April 2016 Edition

Sat, 02 Apr 2016 14:50:44 GMT

Conference Update: Record Numbers & Annual Meeting

Stephanie Shober

This is my third year volunteering on the AAC Board and it has been an honor. The knowledge and dedication of my fellow Board members are consistently impressive. We do need help from our community of fellow acupuncturists to avoid the burn-out that can happen when so few people are doing so much work. We do also have fun together, so please consider volunteering for a committee! You can do so at the conference or by contacting us by phone or email at any time.

The upcoming 33rd Annual Acupuncture Association of Colorado Conference being held April 23^rd -24^th in Westminster has set another attendance record of 150 (at press time) for our state conferences! We are looking forward to learning from author and Chinese Medicine scholar Lonny Jarrett. Registration closes April 15^th and there will be no registration at the door, so register now if you haven’t already.

The annual conference is held in April for a couple of reasons. In election years, an early conference allows us time to come together as a group to hear about issues and candidates that effect Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in time to take action. We also hope by following spring break time, the April conference finds many people in town and able to attend.

The annual business meeting of the Association being held during the lunch break on Saturday is a requirement of our by-laws and the one opportunity each year that we have to all come together to learn what is happening legislatively for our profession, discuss important issues and set goals. Our conference is also a fundraiser that, along with membership dues, keeps us going.

If you cannot attend the conference, please consider coming to the annual meeting from 12:30 – 2:00 on Saturday the 23^rd at the Westminster Marriott. You must RSVP for yourself only by April 20^th to stephanie@wholehealthcenters.com using an email subject line stating your full name and "RSVP Annual Meeting." Only members are allowed at the annual meeting, so please make sure your membership is current by logging in to www.acucol.com or contacting Charissa at info@acucol.com or 303-572-8744. (Lunch is provided for conference attendees only and is not available for purchase at the meeting, so please plan accordingly.)

I look forward to spending time together with fellow acupuncturists and learning new things from Lonny’s sessions. See you there!

Kind regards,
Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Community Committee & Conference Chair
AAC Board of Directors

________________

Message from the President: Dry Needling, ASA & Website Updates

Kimberley Benjamin

Thank you to those of you who will be attending our conference this year with Lonny Jarrett. Along with membership dues, the conference helps support the AAC’s activities and expenses, and we appreciate your support.

Dry Needling: The AAC has spent the last year researching our options regarding Dry Needling. There will be a full report at our annual members’ meeting at 12:30 on the 23^rd during the conference. We hope you will come even If you cannot register for the entire conference. Please see the Conference Update in this newsletter for more details and annual meeting RSVP information. If you would like to contribute to the cause please contact me directly and/or donate here.

American Society of Acupuncturists: Board member Scott Richardson (President Emeritus) and I represented the AAC membership at the annual ASA meeting last month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The meeting was very productive and we were able to collaborate with other national entities including the NCCAOM, CCAOM, and ACAOM. You may have heard about the launching of NCCAOM’s Academy of Diplomates. It was created to serve the Diplomates and will not charge membership dues. Its intention is to work cooperatively and synergistically with all AOM professional associations in support of the AOM profession.

The ASA worked very closely with the NCCAOM as they created the Academy and has a strategic relationship with them. The ASA continues to have a representative on the CPT code committee and is tracking items that impact acupuncturists. They also have representatives attending the ISO (International Standardizations Organization) meetings which have special groups working on products used in Chinese Medicine.

An in-depth report was also presented detailing how Dry Needling is impacting acupuncture patients nationally. Some of this information will be relayed in our annual meeting.

The ASA is proving to be a valuable asset to our organization and it is representing us well at a national and even global level. We hope you see the value in it, too. In light of this we may raise membership dues this year to account for our ASA membership, which is based in part on how many members we have. Because our relationship with the ASA is a non-competing model, meaning our members are automatically members of the ASA and benefit from their work without having to pay separate dues, the increase will be a very small amount compared to joining a separate organization. If you would like to read the full report on the ASA activities you may access it on our Facebook page.

Website update: The board has voted to move our antiquated website and membership data from its current platform to an updated platform. We were able to find a cost-effective solution to upgrade the look and user experience while increasing functionality. Please keep an eye out for emails regarding this process as everyone will need to sign on to the new platform to make sure your information was ported over accurately. This will take place after the conference, most likely sometime in May or June. Some announcements are made more rapidly on Facebook, so please “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page and turn on notifications by hovering over the Like button until a drop down menu appears and choose Notifications “All On”.

Thanks again for your membership and support. We would not be able to do this without you.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

___________________________

Finance Update & Looking for Our Next Treasurer

Katie Robinette

The Acupuncture Association of Colorado is looking for their next Treasurer! You can be a part of the executive team of the AAC and help the board to protect and advance the acupuncture profession in Colorado. Bookkeeping skills are a plus, but the association does have bookkeepers as well as an accountant who prepares our taxes. As the current treasurer, I will give you thorough training and will be your teammate until you feel comfortable in your new role. Join a dynamic group of people working for positive change! If you have any questions or would like to discuss the possibilities of this volunteer position, please email me at Treasurer@acucol.com.

The association continues to do well with its currently limited funding. A large portion of our budget goes to paying our lobbyist, Leo Boyle, who has been working on our behalf for over a decade. He is a seasoned professional, is well-known and well-liked at the capitol, and we couldn’t have passed our injectables bill without him. We were able to negotiate a lower base rate with him for 2016, which will only increase if he needs to take legislative measures for us. Happily, our monthly payment plan to the attorneys who researched and drafted our injection therapy bill will be completed this year. Another cost-saving measure we took this year was to convert to a virtual office when the rent on our Wheat Ridge office was about to be raised more than 100 percent.

Our research into the Dry Needling issue has been expensive. We will be discussing the results of our research at length during our annual members-only meeting being held Saturday, April 23 at 12:30 PM during the AAC Annual Conference lunch break. If you would like to know what is happening around this issue and voice your opinion, please join us. A full financial report is also shared at this meeting. See more details and RSVP information in the Conference Update in this newsletter. The annual conference not only provides CEUs and sense of community for Colorado acupuncturists, but is also a fundraising opportunity for your professional association.

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you at the conference and/or the annual meeting!

Katie Robinette, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Treasurer, AAC Board of Directors
Treasurer@acucol.com

________________________________

Injectables Update

Following the passage of our bill last spring we have had many subsequent meetings with DORA regarding making the necessary rules. DORA prepared a list of allowed injectable substances, rules for training and proposed changes to the pharmacy practice act that will enable us to purchase compounded substances again from in-state companies such as College Pharmacy. For more details on the rules, training requirements and pharmacy act changes please see the January Newsletter in the Blog section of acucol.com.

At this time we are still waiting for the Director of DORA to sign the new rules and changes into effect. Our President Emeritus Scott Richardson has been following up with DORA acupuncture program director Leanne Duffy on a regular basis and was told on April 7th that there is no new information yet, but that she has been emailing the Director "regularly" on the topic. The Director is expected to sign the rules into effect by April 23^rd (a deadline set by the date of our October 23^rd meeting), so we should be able to procure injectables by the end of the month! We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress on this subject. Please “Like” the Acupuncture Association of Colorado’s Facebook page and turn on notifications by hovering over the Like button until a drop down menu appears and choose Notifications “All On”.

_______________________

Order Your Year of the Monkey T-Shirt by April 24^th!

The beneficial effects of Acupuncture have gained recognition among other health professionals, but are still largely misunderstood by insurance companies and law makers. The AAC is working to keep Acupuncture safe and legal in Colorado. Our efforts at this critical time in our profession are costly. You can support Acupuncture and Oriental medicine in our state by purchasing this cool T-shirt that celebrates the Year of the Monkey. If you missed the opportunity earlier this year to purchase one, please help us reach our second goal of 50 t-shirts before April 24th. You should then receive your shirt before May 12th. (There is a $5 shipping fee in addition to the cost of the shirt.)

Click Here to Purchase your T-shirt!

Even if you don't want a T-shirt you may still make a donation here.

Thank you for your support!

__________________________________

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Colorado Acupuncturist - January 2016 Edition

Fri, 01 Jan 2016 15:19:07 GMT

Lonny Jarrett at the 33rd Annual Acupuncture Association of Colorado Conference at the Marriott Westminster

Lonny Jarrett

The AAC is pleased to announce Lonny Jarrett will be joining us in Denver April 23-24, 2016 at the Westminster Marriott for a two-day seminar entitled Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot.

About the class: In this class Lonny will discuss how to diagnose and treat trauma with Chinese medicine. We will consider the heart/kidney axis as the physiological foundation of stability and how to restore integrity to this most important relationship. Lonny will emphasize the importance of the practitioner's awareness of the dimension of self that is never wounded or traumatized as a gold standard in diagnosis and treatment. In this regard, the practitioner's own integrity will be considered as the root of efficacy in treatment. The class will be rooted in an appreciation of the core dimensions and capacities of the self, including the spirit, ego, emptiness, soul, conscience, and the will.

About Lonny: Lonny S. Jarrett, M. Ac., author of Nourishing Destiny, The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine and The Clinical Practice of Chinese Medicine has been practicing in Stockbridge, Massachusetts since 1986. He is a founding board member of the Acupuncture Society of Massachusetts and a Fellow of the National Academy of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. He holds a master's degree in neurobiology and a fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. He was recently featured in the text, "The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling" by best-selling author Stephen Cope. Lonny hosts NourishingDestiny.com, an online community for 3000 practitioners of Chinese medicine worldwide.

The Conference Schedule

Saturday, April 23
7:30 – 8:30       Registration / Visit Exhibitors & Silent Auction Booth
8:30– 10:30      Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
10:30 – 11:00    Break
11::00 – 12:30   Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
12:30 – 2:00      Complimentary Lunch / Acupuncture Association of Colorado Annual Meeting
2:00 – 4:00       Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
4:00 – 4:30       Break
4:30 – 6:30       Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
6:30 – 7:30       Complimentary Evening Reception

Sunday, April 24
8:00 – 8:30       Visit Exhibitors / Silent Auction Closes
8:30– 10:00      Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
10:00 – 10:30   Break
10:30 – 12:00    Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
12:00 – 1:00      Complimentary Lunch / Silent Auction Items Awarded
1:00 – 3:00       Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot
3:00 – 3:30       Break
3:30 – 5:00       Lonny Jarrett Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot

Venue / Lodging

The conference will be held at Marriott Westminster, 7000 Church Ranch Blvd., Westminster, CO 80021

The AAC has arranged room rates of $119/night beginning Friday, April 22^nd.
Please make your reservation before Tuesday, March 22^nd to guarantee a room at this rate.

Click here to book your room

Please click here for more information and to register!

________________

Message from the President: Dry Needling, Injectables and the ASA

Kimberley Benjamin

Hello and Happy New Year! We are so excited to have Lonny Jarrett coming to our conference to share his knowledge with us. Please reserve your place early, as last year we sold out and we want everyone who would like to learn from him to have the opportunity to do so.
Dry Needling: The AAC continues to explore the very important and current topic of Dry Needling. Research of safety issues as well as historic legislative and policy documents is costly. If you would like to contribute to the cause please see our T-shirt campaign below and/or contact me directly at President@acucol.com or (970) 214-6683. We will give you a full report on this topic at our annual meeting in April. Even if you can’t attend the entire conference please join us for our annual meeting 1:00 - 2:00 on Saturday, April 23rd at the Westminster Marriott.

Injectables: We continue to work on obtaining the right to procure injectables following the passage of our bill last spring. The process has been long and intricate, involving several stakeholders. We have participated in meetings leading to DORA preparing a list of allowed injectable substances, rules for training and proposed changes to the pharmacy practice act that will enable us to purchase compounded substances again from in-state companies such as College Pharmacy.

List of proposed substances:
(1) Dextrose; (2) d-glucose; (3) Enzymes except urokinase; (4) Glucose; (4) Homeopathic Substances (to only include those that are within the US Pharmacopia); (5) Hyaluronic Acid; (6) Minerals; (7) Saline; (8) Sarapin; (9) Sodium chloride; (9) Sterile water; (10) Traumeel; (11) Vitamins; (12) Cyanocobalamin; (13) Lidocaine; (14) Marcaine (Bupivacaine Hydrochloride) with or without epinephrine; (15) Oriental Herbs; (16) Procaine; and (17) Vitamin B-12.

There are additional substances that were not specifically listed previously. For work with oriental herbs injectables, practitioners must have completed herbal training and be a NCCAOM Oriental Medicine diplomate or be California certified. Practitioners also need to maintain current First Aid and Basic Life Support CPR certification and be trained in the use of oxygen and intramuscular epinephrine. One only needs to be trained in oxygen and IM epi for the substances known to have adverse reactions (12-17), and be trained in herbs for injecting herbs. Proposed change to the pharmacy practice act:

(a) An in-state prescription drug outlet shall only distribute a compounded product to:

(1) Practitioners licensed and located in Colorado and authorized by law to prescribe the drug

(2) Colorado licensed/registered acupuncturists, direct-entry midwives, or naturopathic doctors who are located in Colorado and authorized by law to obtain the drug.

The Director of DORA has up to six months from our last meeting on October 23rd to sign the rules into effect. So it could be as late as April before we are able to obtain injectables again. We will continue to keep you apprised of our progress on this subject. Make sure you are following us on Facebook and are signed up for our Yahoo Group to get the most timely updates.

ASA: The next American Society of Acupuncturists meeting will be held March 3rd and 4th in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The AAC will be sending two representatives to participate. This important newly-formed national organization helps keep our fingers on the pulse of AOM issues and to have a voice in the progress of our profession nationally and globally. Because the AAC is a member organization of the ASA, AAC members get free issues of the peer-reviewed Meridians Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. See the announcement below about the winter issue, ready now for download.

Thank you for your continued support and membership, and I look forward to seeing you at the conference in April.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com (970) 214-6683

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Order Your Year of the Monkey T-Shirt by January 24^th!

The beneficial effects of Acupuncture have gained recognition among other health professionals, but are still largely misunderstood by insurance companies and law makers. The AAC is working to keep Acupuncture safe and legal in Colorado. Our efforts at this critical time in our profession are costly. You can support Acupuncture and Oriental medicine in our state by purchasing this cool T-shirt that celebrates the Year of the Monkey. Please help us reach our first goal of 50 t-shirts before January 24th. You should then receive your shirt by February 11th. (There is a $5 shipping fee in addition to the cost of the shirt.) You may also make an additional or separate donation to our cause. Thank you for your support!

Click Here to Purchase your T-shirt!

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Finance Report: Stretching our Funds and Looking for Our Next Treasurer

Katie Robinette

The association is doing well with its limited funding, however we still needed to dip into our savings in 2015. A large portion of our budget goes to paying our lobbyist, Leo Boyle, who has been working on our behalf for over a decade. He is a seasoned professional, is well-known and well-liked at the capitol and we couldn’t have passed our injectables bill without him. We were able to negotiate a lower base rate with him for 2016, which will increase if he needs to take legislative measures for us. We are continuing to pay the attorneys who researched and drafted our injection therapy bill on a monthly payment plan.

Our continued research of the Dry Needling issue is expensive. We would also like to have enough funds for educational outreach to the public about the benefits (safety and otherwise) of seeing a licensed acupuncturist, and we have discussed hiring an executive director to help our all-volunteer board represent you more effectively and efficiently. However, our funds are currently stretched to the max. Please help us to increase our membership by spreading the word about how active our association truly is and also see the T-shirt campaign in this newsletter. We also hope you will attend our annual conference, which not only provides CEUs and sense of community for Colorado acupuncturists, but is also a fundraising opportunity for your professional association.

The Acupuncture Association of Colorado is looking for their next Treasurer. You can be a part of the executive team of the AAC and help the board to protect and advance the acupuncture profession in Colorado. Bookkeeping skills are a plus, but the association does have bookkeepers. As the current treasurer, I will give you thorough training and will be your teammate until you feel comfortable in your new role. Would you like to join a dynamic group of people working for positive change? If you have any questions or would like to discuss the possibilities, please email me at Treasurer@acucol.com. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you at the conference!

Katie Robinette, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Treasurer, AAC Board of Directors
Treasurer@acucol.com

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Your Free Winter Issue of the Meridians Journal is Ready for Download!

The winter issue, v. 3 no. 1, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now online! This and all issues of the peer-reviewed, Medline compliant journal are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. To access your download just click on “Register” to create a new account at their website and self-certify that you are a member of a State Association. You will be able to place an “order” for the zero-cost PDF downloads. You do not have to do this for each issue, just the first time. After initially registering, all you have to do is log in when a new issue is uploaded.

If you have any questions about access to the online issues, please feel free to contact the webmaster, Brian Smither, at webmaster@meridiansjaom.com. He will be happy to assist you so you can read this issue and all issues of Meridians JAOM.

Clinical Pearls Call for Submissions: How Do You Treat Erectile Dysfunction in Your Clinic?

Practitioners, please submit your short (approx. 500 words) clinical pearl addressing this topic by or before February 1, 2016. Preview the Submission Details at the MJAOM website and submit to: cpeditor@meridiansjaom.com __________________________________

Making the Case for Acupuncture Instead of Opiates

Brittney Chowning

Chinese medicine is a beautiful and natural way to approach health and healing. One of the most notable and well-researched applications of acupuncture treatment is to relieve pain. Any kind of discomfort can be considered pain, including physical and emotional. As many of us are aware, our current society has a quick-fix mentality. When we have acid regurgitation we are prescribed a pill, when we are in pain we are prescribed a pill, when we are depressed…and so on. This method has led us down a rabbit hole leading to addiction, dis-ease and overdose. In the state of Colorado alone an average of thirty five people die from opiate use each month. As practitioners of Oriental Medicine it is our duty not only to treat those that come to us for healing but to educate them and our communities about healthier ways of living.

Joe Brady, L.Ac. and Jacqui Shumway, M.A. of the Young Living Institute in Denver are preparing a report to present later this month to the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing demonstrating that Chinese medicine is more effective than opiates in treating pain. Their goal is to persuade the CHCPF to encourage health care organizations to revise their strategies for the treatment of pain to include approaches such as acupuncture and other traditional therapies as a viable alternative to opiate prescriptions. They have been collecting high-quality research articles showing the effectiveness of acupuncture, Chinese herbs and adjunct therapies such as moxibustion, cupping and gua sha in the treatment of pain as evidence for this report. As healers we ultimately want to extend our wealth of knowledge of health and wellbeing to those that may not have had access to this kind of information. This progression is invaluable to the acupuncture profession and to the communities we serve. As we endeavor to educate and influence the institutions charged with caring for the public’s health we are headed towards a healthier and more productive future for the citizens of Colorado. If you are aware of any research articles, white papers or position papers that could be useful in the presentation, please e-mail me at studentrep@acucol.com at your earliest opportunity. Thank you.

Brittney Chowning, CSTCM Student
AAC Student Representative
studentrep@acucol.com

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Colorado Acupuncturist - October 2015 Edition

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 15:27:11 GMT

Message from the President

Kimberley Benjamin

Hello, members and friends of the AAC!

Many of you have been waiting for a resolution to the procurement of injectables issue and I am happy to report that it is imminent. Our President Emeritus Scott Richardson and I have been in close contact with DORA, and next week there will be a Rules hearing at which a list of approved substances is expected to be presented by DORA as well any additional training that may be required. We should also have an answer about the manufactured vs compound debate. Please keep an eye on our Facebook page for an announcement after the October 23rd hearing.

I'm pleased to announce that the AAC has officially become a voting member of the newly-formed American Society of Acupuncturists . If you are a member of the AAC, you have the benefit of being represented at the national level by the ASA. This November, the ASA is sending a representative to the Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR) meeting in Boston. SAR is dedicated to improving the quality and increasing the awareness of research in acupuncture, herbal therapy and other modalities of Oriental Medicine. SAR’s Board is comprised of both clinicians and research scientists. The SAR board spends their time and resources keeping an eye on what’s happening in the field of acupuncture research, with an over-arching goal of identifying gaps between research and practice, opening dialogue about issues that affect the global Oriental Medicine community, and hosting public conferences. Our representative from the ASA will be there to continue building bridges between research of our medicine and how it can impact legislation and advocacy of our profession.

The ASA is simultaneously working on a Dry Needling committee at the national level to bring a national voice to the issues we are all challenged with. The AAC Board is aware and understands that our members are very concerned about the issues surrounding Dry Needling in Colorado and we are working diligently on your behalf to find the best path forward in our state regarding this topic. If you would like to be involved beyond your membership please call or email me directly.

Lastly, I'm very sad to let you know that the board of directors is mourning the loss of Fundraising Chair Sue West, who passed away suddenly last month. Please see the memorial article in this newsletter and keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you for your continued support and membership.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

President, AAC Board of Directors

President@acucol.com (970) 214-6683

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New Treasurer Needed: Get Experience Running a Non-Profit while Advancing Our Profession!

Katie Robinette

The Acupuncture Association of Colorado is looking for their next Treasurer! Be a part of the executive team of the AAC, and help the board to protect and advance the acupuncture profession in Colorado. This board is very active and involved in many exciting projects. Bookkeeping skills are a plus, but the association does have bookkeepers. As the current treasurer, I will give you thorough training and will be your teammate until you feel comfortable in your new role. Board members serve on a volunteer basis for a three year tenure. In that time, you will learn valuable skills for running a business from the financial side, which is rarely taught in acupuncture school, and much, much more. Are you ready to be a force for positive change? If you have any questions or would like to discuss the possibilities, please email me at Treasurer@acucol.com

Katie Robinette, L.Ac., NCCAOM Treasurer, AAC Board of Directors Treasurer@acucol.com

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From the Public Relations Chair

Hello Acupuncturists of Colorado!

Mark VanOtterloo

I am the Public Relations Chair for the AAC and have a few goals in mind for the remainder of 2015. To start with, I would like to strengthen the presence of the Acupuncture Association on online forums. This will highlight the extensive ways our association provides activism opportunities, creates community functions and nurtures acupuncture support. Please make sure you are following the AAC on Facebook to see important announcements and events. Additionally, joining the AAC Yahoo Group enables you to directly interact with your fellow AAC members and the board, and get special members-only announcements. Another major focus is to increase the percentage of Colorado acupuncturists who are members, as well as garnering non-practitioner support.AOM Day, October 24th, is quickly approaching. It is the perfect time to devise innovative ways to promote acupuncture to the public while growing your practice. Empathizing with different perspectives can inspire engaging ways to interact with the prospective AOM patients.

The NCCAOM and the American Society of Acupuncturists have created materials to help you educate your patients and community about Acupuncture and AOM.

Here is the link for free downloads of AOM Day materials: http://aomday.org/get.html.

If you are holding an event, you can list it for free here: http://aomday.org/programs.html.

If you have any questions or ideas please send me an email at PRCOMM@acucol.com.

Mark VanOtterloo, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

Public Relations Committee Chair

PRCOMM@acucol.com

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33^rd Annual AAC Conference at the Marriott Westminster

Stephanie Shober

We are pleased to announce that our 33^rd annual conference will be held April 23-24, 2016, at the beautiful Marriott Westminster. We have negotiated a $119 nightly room rate for attendees wishing to stay at the hotel. Follow this link to the Marriott Westminster website if you would like to check it out.

As previously announced, Lonny Jarrett, author of Nourishing Destiny, will be joining us for a two-day seminar entitled Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot. We are so excited to have this internationally-renowned author and speaker as our educator for the weekend. At lunch we will conduct our annual meeting during which we’ll discuss important business and how we can build a stronger profession together in Colorado.

Looking forward to seeing you all in April, please stay tuned for registration information!

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

Conference Committee Chair

ConferenceComm@acucol.com

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Your Free Fall Issue of the Meridians Journal is Ready for Download!

The fall issue, v. 2 #4, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now online! This and all issues of the peer-reviewed, Medline compliant journal are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. To access your download just click on “Register” to create a new account at their website and self-certify that you are a member of a State Association. You will be able to place an “order” for the zero-cost PDF downloads. You do not have to do this for each issue, just the first time. After initially registering, all you have to do is log in when a new issue is uploaded.

If you have any questions about access to the online issues, please feel free to contact the webmaster, Brian Smither, at webmaster@meridiansjaom.com. He will be happy to assist you so you can read this issue and all issues of Meridians JAOM.

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In Memory of Fundraising Chair Sue West

For those of you who are not aware, it is with great sadness that we bring you the news that AAC board member Sue West passed away quite suddenly September 1st after a brief battle with stomach cancer. Attendance at her memorial on September 11th in Castle Rock overflowed the room. It was a moving tribute to an amazingly dedicated and compassionate woman, wife, mother, friend, practitioner and AAC board member. So many people spoke eloquently of how she had touched their lives and facilitated healing on many levels.

She was incredibly passionate about Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and devoted countless hours supporting our profession. For those of you who were lucky enough to get one of the AAC Acupuncture Presentation flashdrives at this year’s conference, you should know that this was just one of the multitude of projects Sue devised and coordinated. She would drive all over the state to talk with practitioners about what the association was doing and encourage them to get involved.

Sue's kind and caring presence will be sadly missed by so many. Those of us lucky enough to have served on the board with her recognize that she is irreplaceable. Her contributions to the AAC and our profession, her patients, family and friends are immeasurable. We have lost a true advocate and a shining light. Her family has informed us that in tribute to Sue, donations may be made to The Denver Hospice or Colorado Cancer Research Program.

Robin Schiesser, L.Ac., Dipl. OM

Vice President, AAC Board of Directors

VicePresident@acucol.com

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AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Click on the link below.

BECOME A MEMBER!

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Charissa Haines at the AAC Office at 303-572-8744 or email at info@acucol.com

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Thank you for supporting our advertisers!!

___

AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Click on the link below.

BECOME A MEMBER!

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Charissa Haines at the AAC Office at 303-572-8744 or email at info@acucol.com

The Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2015 edition

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 15:28:40 GMT

My Mission as President: Value for our Members

Kimberley Benjamin

I am excited to have this opportunity to serve all of you in the coming year. We have a great team this year--some new people along with some veterans volunteering their time to work for you. Please welcome them and keep in mind that someday you may want to take a turn at serving your profession. (Don’t miss the free e-book download at the end of this newsletter from James MacRitchie, a founding member of the AAC who wants to pass on some of what he’s learned in more than 35 years of practice.)

My goal this year is to effectively carry on the work that the AAC has done for years–to track policy and legislation to be sure we are protecting your scope of practice, and to educate policymakers and the public to build awareness of Acupuncture and Oriental medicine to help your practice prosper–to be the voice and the ears of acupuncturists in Colorado. My hope is to also update the AAC’s systems and policies to help future boards transition easier and give new board members the tools they need to further strengthen our profession.

In addition to this work, I’m proud that the AAC has been involved with the CSA (Council of State Associations) as they have gone through a lengthy process to start a new national association to help support our profession. After much debate and discussion the new organization has been named the American Society of Acupuncturists (ASA). They have had three teleconference meetings to date and the AAC is tracking their progress.

By being a member of the AAC you are automatically a member of the newly-formed ASA and have national and international representation. For example, Vice-Chair Eric Buckley recently attended the International Standards Organization Technical Committee meeting in Beijing as a part of the U.S. ISO delegation to work on standards directly related to TCM.

One of the concrete benefits you are already receiving from the ASA as an AAC member is free access to the peer-reviewed journal Meridians Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Please see the summer issue announcement further down in this newsletter.

Another inherent benefit of being involved with the ASA is that we are constantly informed of current issues facing our profession. Through the ASA we have received a survey being conducted by the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine on attitudes toward the use of the term “Oriental” to describe our medicine. You can take the survey here. Please feel free to share this with other practitioners and your patients to help us gain a better understanding of the cultural norms and attitudes towards this particular word, and what it means to our community. This research could influence evolution of the terminology of our field.

We are also learning how other states have approached getting included as an Essential Health Benefit under the Affordable Care Act and will use this information in our own efforts as we present to insurance companies and policymakers. We look forward to seeing additional value the ASA will add to our organization and membership.

The AAC board of directors is excited to work for you in the year ahead. Please don’t hesitate to contact me directly if you have any questions about what the AAC is doing or have ideas about how the AAC can better serve our profession.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
President, AAC Board of Directors
President@acucol.com
(970) 214-6683

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Injection Therapy Update

Scott Richardson

Thank you all for your patience as we are trying to restore procurement rights of sterile substances for injection since our bill HB 1360 passed this spring. We have been calling local pharmacies and distribution centers letting them know of the recent change, but we are still waiting for DORA to promulgate rules and publish an official list of substances (this was part of the bill that was passed). We have been in contact with DORA on a weekly basis trying to expedite this process and resolve any concerns they may have on setting hours of training. If you want the most up-to-date information or would like to have a better explanation as to why this process is taking so long I invite you to contact LeAnne Duffy at DORA, as she is their Program Director of Acupuncture. Her contact information is: (303) 894-7796, leanne.duffy@state.co.us.

It MAY be possible to order some products like cynocobalamin and lidocaine from College Pharmacy. We do not know for sure yet. We also have a contact from McKesson that is looking for a couple of acupuncturists to open up accounts to make sure the kinks are worked out for ordering from there. They have B12, Lidocaine, Epi-Pens, and more.

McKesson Medical Surgical
Brad Becker
Account Manager
cell phone (303) 596-1416
brad.becker@mckesson.com

The bottom line is that it won't be official until DORA finishes their part, but we look forward to letting you know when that happens!

Scott Richardson, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
AAC Immediate Past President
IPPresident@acucol.com

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What goes on at AAC Board Meetings?
Building a Stronger Profession–Together!

Yvonne Piper

The AAC meets every six weeks to discuss important issues that affect our members and to explore and coordinate actions we can take to support our profession in Colorado. Below is a brief summary of what was discussed during our last meeting.

We are happy that our efforts have allowed us to procure injectables now! We continue to work with the pharmacies & DORA to complete the list of substances we need. Resources for procuring injectables will be listed on the Resource page of our website.
Board members have been trying to make sense of the OSHA requirements and will continue to post information to Yahoo Groups, Facebook and the AAC website. Please see Membership Chair Sa’bura Goodban’s article in this newsletter for more info.
The AAC voted to engage Brent Foster, who was the lead attorney on the successful cases to stop PT’s from dry needling in Washington and Oregon, to research case law and statutes in Colorado. He will be working with Kari Hershey, a Colorado attorney. They will submit a brief on legal options and the strength of any possible suit. The estimate for this work is $2,000 - $2,500. If it is decided that legal action is warranted we will need to raise at least $25,000 to proceed.
The AAC continues to build and maintain relationships with companies that offer discounts, services, greater exposure and fundraising collaboration to acupuncturists such as Blue Poppy, BancTek, ZenVault and Colorado Medical Waste. Fundraising Chair Sue West is exploring how we can become a part of the Amazon Smile program as well.
Sue is also continuing to work on presentations to insurance companies and decision makers regarding getting Acupuncture included as an Essential Health Benefit under the ACA. Former board member Anne Chew is assisting with this. They welcome any help.
The AAC now has two student representatives who help us with fresh insight to our profession by offering us their time and feedback as well as involving the student bodies at Colorado acupuncture schools. Brittney, the student rep at CSTCM has conducted a student survey and is organizing the results. She is also setting up a student Facebook page.
We are pleased to continue working with Charissa Haines, who provides the AAC with administrative services. Charissa fields all of your emails, phone calls and mail, helps members join and renew membership, sends out announcements and newsletters, and helps maintain or website and organize our annual conference. Thank you, Charissa!

Now is the time to come together to build a strong profession. Please help us make our profession stronger by volunteering some time. If you would like to help the AAC with any of these issues, please contact me using the information at the end of this article. All AAC professional and student members are more than welcome to attend AAC board meetings. Space is Limited - Please RSVP if you would like to attend the next meeting:

Saturday, July 18^th 10am – 12pm

The Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine
1441 York St. #202
Denver, CO 80206
Room E (Located in the right corner across from the student clinic)

To RSVP text message me at (720) 387-9522 with your name and email address, or email me at omwellnessllc@gmail.com

Yvonne Piper, L.Ac.,Dipl. OM
AAC Secretary

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Annual Conference Update:
2015 Feedback & Lonny Jarrett in 2016!

Stephanie Shober

Thanks to everyone–attendees, speakers, and sponsors–for a fantastic 2015 AAC conference featuring Jeffrey Yuen, Daisy Dong and Bruce Levy. Thanks particularly to:

* Golden Flower Chinese Herbs for the $100 Gift Certificate raffle item
* Blue Poppy for sponsoring Saturday's lunch
* Lhasa OMS for donating three cases of Seirin needles to encourage new membership in the AAC and for sponsoring Sunday's lunch
* Far East Summit for sponsoring Saturday's breaks
* American Acupuncture Council for sponsoring Sunday's breaks

We are listening! Here is a sampling of the attendee feedback we received:

Good job remarks:

Awesome all around: timing, preparedness, breaks, everything! Felt that all attendees were respectful, interested in material, and happy to be here.
Best lunches ever! Great job!
Good job. Well organized. Great meeting.
Great experience! Thank you all for your hard work!
Great to bond with other practitioners. Great speakers.
Liked the location and lunch provided was a very nice bonus!

Needs work remarks:

The “lecturing at students” style kind of has its limits. Smaller groups? Conference style? Discussion groups?
Start at 8AM so we can get out by 5:30-6:00.
Chairs were very hard for the long lectures. Very uncomfortable.
Location far from central. Why Colorado Springs? Otherwise, very nice.
Need more restroom facilities.
Room too long & narrow. Back tables too far from speaker. Hotel was nice by atrium very noisy.
Very crowded on our first day.

We thank you for your comments and will use them to shape future events.

SAVE THE DATE - April 23-24, 2016!

We are excited to announce that Lonny Jarrett will be joining us in Denver next year for a two-day seminar entitled Treating Trauma with Chinese Medicine: Untying the Knot.

Lonny will discuss how to diagnose and treat trauma with Chinese medicine, considering the heart/kidney axis as the physiological foundation of stability and how to restore integrity to this most important relationship. Lonny will emphasize the importance of the practitioner's awareness of the dimension of self that is never wounded or traumatized as a gold standard in diagnosis and treatment. The class will be rooted in an appreciation of the core dimensions and capacities of the self, including the spirit, ego, emptiness, soul, conscience, and the will.

Lonny S. Jarrett, M. Ac., author of Nourishing Destiny, The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine and The Clinical Practice of Chinese Medicine has been practicing in Stockbridge, Massachusetts since 1986. He hosts NourishingDestiny.com, an online community for 3000 practitioners of Chinese medicine worldwide.

The conference will be held in the Denver area, and details about the venue will come later this year. Like this year, we will contract with a hotel that is attractive, well-maintained, and economical. We will find a ballroom with a larger capacity and better layout for accommodating the large crowd that we are. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
AAC Conference Chair

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Are you prepared? The Colorado
Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps is!

Every day there are more stories about natural disasters such as fires, floods, tornados and earthquakes. Not only is our planet demonstrating this volatile state, so are we, its inhabitants and caretakers. There seem to be increasing stories of wars, riots and shootings. As practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine, we understand the principles and relationship of EXTERNAL and INTERNAL energies. We understand how to bring balance to our patients on an individual basis, but what can we do globally in the wake of so many disasters and traumas? You already have the tools to make a difference─your skills and knowledge of acupuncture. Colorado has a unique way for you to apply those tools. It’s known as the Colorado Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps (CAMRC).

All 50 states have Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) units, however Colorado has the nation’s first acupuncture-based, federally approved unit that deploys either on its own or with Behavioral Health units in response to disasters within the state. The CAMRC has responded to numerous disasters and events to assist in the immediate healing and long term recovery of the communities and people affected. As a result of the success with this program, other acupuncturists who have witnessed it or heard about it have requested assistance from the CAMRC to begin the process of creating acupuncture-based or integrated units in other states. Some of the more recent efforts outside of Colorado: Maryland has assembled a team of seven L.Ac.’s who have been NADA or AWB (Acupuncturists Without Borders) trained, and will be treating First Responders at this month’s MRC conference. In addition, a small group of acupuncturists have responded to the flooding in Texas, and there have been other states in contact to prepare for future needs.

In Colorado we currently have 58 L.Ac.’s who have taken the CAMRC training, including the FEMA ICS 100/700 courses and become part of the CAMRC Team through the Colorado Volunteer Mobilizer. The CAMRC schedules three or four weekend training courses (with free CEUs) per year as well as an annual mock drill for disaster response. This year’s drill will be held on October 4, 2015, and will be deploying teams to three different locations (Colorado School of TCM, Southwest Acupuncture College, and the Institute of Taoist Education and Acupuncture). Even if you have not yet taken the CAMRC training course you can still be involved as a volunteer evacuee for the drill and experience treatment from our response teams. This is a great opportunity to learn what it is all about and how you can use your knowledge and skills to bring hope and healing in times of need.

There is also a general CAMRC meeting at 3:30 pm this Sunday, July 19^th at Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder (6620 Gunpark Dr, Boulder, CO 80301) if you would like to get involved.

You may also contact our outreach coordinator, Monica Edlauer, for more information at boulderacupuncture@comcast.net or (303) 859-7556

http://acucol.com/acupuncture-medical-reserve-corp/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/CAMRC/

Steven Shomo, L.Ac., DOM
CAMRC Training Coordinator
zenmedic9@gmail.com

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Your Free Download of the Summer Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready!

The summer issue, v. 2 #3, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now online! This and all issues are available free to you as a valuable benefit of being an AAC member. To access your download just create a new account at their website and self-certify that you are a member of a State Association. You will be able to place an “order” for the zero-cost PDF downloads. You do not have to do this for each issue, just for the first time you access them. After initially registering, all you have to do is log in when a new issue is uploaded.

If you have any questions about access to the online issues, please feel free to contact the webmaster, Brian Smither, at webmaster@meridiansjaom.com. He will be happy to assist you so you can read this issue and all issues of Meridians JAOM.

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Student Rep Update: New Student Facebook Page Under Construction

Brittney Chowning

Hey there acupuncture students–I hope everyone is having a great summer! I have a couple of updates about student matters that could be of interest to you. I put a survey out to the acupuncture students of Colorado at the beginning of the year. Thanks to those of you who participated for all your efforts and responses. The results are in! The only problem is I couldn't think of a simple way to get the results to the student population. I'm working on creating a Facebook page for acupuncture students in Colorado where we can post questions/responses from us to the AAC, updates on legal information, the AAC meeting minutes, and more. I think it's important to stay involved and informed even at the student level. Eventually the acupuncture field in Colorado will depend on us to thrive. So, let's start building our community! The page will be up and running by the end of July. If you have any other burning questions or would like to get involved you can always e-mail me at studentrep@acucol.com, or if you attend SWAC in Boulder, you may like to reach out to our new rep Allicen Maier at studentrep2@acucol.com. We look forward to connecting with you!

Brittney Chowning
AAC Student Representative, CSTCM

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Free E-Book Download to AAC Members

The Adventures of an Acupuncturer: 35 Years Behind the Needle
A Clinical Autobiography of Qigong Acupuncture

By James MacRitchie

James MacRitchie

In writing a ‘Press Release’ for this book–a brief introduction and overview–I reflected on who it was most written for. As somewhat of an autobiography I realised that patients, students, friends and family may find it of some relevance, but the principal audience is the members of the Acupuncture Association of Colorado–not least because I was a member of the AAC from its beginning. Who else would be more interested in what it has to say–technically, practically and professionally? And it contains my ‘practice secrets’, which helped keep me in full-time practice in Boulder for over 30 years. These may be of some curiosity to other practitioners.

The Adventurers of an Acupuncturer is the story of 35 years of ‘working with energy’ with a wide variety of patients...my clinical autobiography of how Qigong became integrated with Acupuncture...and a personal means of summarising life as a practitioner so far. I began Acupuncture practice in 1977, in London, England. In 1981 I took what was to be a one-year sabbatical to Boulder, Colorado. A third of a century later I finally returned to my hometown of Liverpool in 2013. During these years I discovered Qigong, and over the course of time integrated it into my clinical practice. This book is the story of those adventures.

My hope is that you will find this text of some value, and that it will provide another perspective on combining Acupuncture and Qigong in clinical practice. And also that it is accepted in the spirit of homage to practitioners everywhere who are doing, and pioneering, this most astonishing and miraculous work with the energy system.

This e-book can be downloaded free at www.globalqiproject.com.

Please note that it is 4+ MB in size, so may take a little while to download.

Jim MacRitchie
jamesmacritchie@gmail.com
phone: UK 44 (0)79-13-20-89-59

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The Colorado Acupuncturist – April 2015 edition

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 15:42:23 GMT

President's Report - Much Accomplished and More on the Horizon

Scott Richardson

As I am finishing up my term as president and my third year volunteering with the board, I am so proud of the work that has been accomplished and the opportunity I have had to serve with these fellow practitioners. I am absolutely confident that the organization will continue to grow with the members serving on the board. I also invite anyone who is passionate about our medicine and who wants to become more active in the community to come to the board meetings and volunteer on a committee or on the board. It will broaden your understanding of what it takes to be a licensed healthcare practitioner in the US and to keep the practice of our medicine growing in our state.

This past year has been trying for those that practice injection therapy, but we have made some amazing progress towards resolving that issue. We have worked closely with the Colorado Medical Society in our attempts to re-gain the ability to procure injectable substances and I can’t recall another time when our two organizations have collaborated to this degree. We have built bridges that will continue to serve us for years to come.

We also met with Insurance Commissioner Salazar and her staff regarding attaining Essential Health Benefits status under the Affordable Care Act in Colorado. We are now awaiting the announcement of the group of plans from which the next model health plan will be chosen and will then continue to advocate for the selection of a plan that includes Acupuncture as a covered benefit.

We also have another project coming up this summer that I am really excited about. It is extremely important that we have your most recent contact information to keep you informed of these important events. While I cannot go in to too much detail now, I promise that it is something that we will all celebrate. We will need your help to get as many people involved as possible, so please, reach out to other acupuncturists and spread the word.

Again, I want to express what an honor it has been to serve with my colleagues on the board. In speaking with past AAC presidents they have been impressed at the level of cooperation and community that we have. While I am looking forward to having a little more time when my term is complete at the end of this month, I promise that I will continue to be involved and assist however I can.

Thank you all for the opportunity to represent our profession and this wonderful community of healers in Colorado.

Vice President's Report - You are an Acupuncturist!

Kimberley Benjamin

Some of you may or may not know that our profession hasn't had a Standard Occupational Classification Code (SOC) designation with the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS). The NCCAOM has been working diligently to get us a designation and it appears that it will be happening soon. Even though the designation will not be completely official until the comment and review period is complete in 2017, you are an Acupuncturist and should be using that word as your profession or occupation in any legal or tax documents. For example, when you file your taxes your occupation should be listed as "Acupuncturist."

This consistency allows data collection on employment, unemployment, salaries, etc., so we can get funding and create jobs. It will help open doors to working in hospitals and could lead to student loan forgiveness. So when the Census knocks on your door and asks you what your profession is you say “Acupuncturist!” We know you do A LOT more than just acupuncture but this designation will help legitimize our profession. For more information on the NCCAOM’s efforts visit http://www.nccaom.org/bls.

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac.
970-472-0955
VicePresident@acucol.com

Secretary Report

Robin Schiesser

This past year has been an incredibly busy one for the AAC. We do our best to keep you up-to-date with our quarterly newsletters. As Scott wrote in the President's report, there has been a lot going on legally regarding Injectables and our right to procure them, as well as our efforts to gain Essential Health Benefits status under the ACA. Dry Needling continues to be a concern and we will be posting informative documents on our website. Please stay tuned.

Our Vice President Kimberley Benjamin has been keeping us apprised of developments in the Council of State Associations and along with our new board member Yvonne Piper attended their annual conference in March. The CSA is the most inclusive organization yet achieved in our profession and is tirelessly working to support the states in their legislative, education, publication and professional efforts on behalf of their association members.

The November election kept our Legislative chair George Graf busy attending events to educate candidates about acupuncturists and our concerns. Thanks to those who responded to our call for donations, of the 20 candidates we supported, 15 retained or gained seats in the house and senate. We look forward to a productive relationship with the legislature during future efforts.

Fundraising chair Sue West has been busy coordinating efforts to simultaneously support our organization and help practitioners by developing a Power Point presentation about Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine that can be used to educate your patients, referring practitioners and community. Her committee, including Anne Chew, Mark Van Otterloo and Yvonne Piper, has created and loaded this presentation and other helpful documents and articles onto a USB flashdrive that is available for a nominal donation.

Jacqui Strike, our Public Relations chair has been busy posting to our Social Media and coordinating volunteers to run Interactive Educational Centers about acupuncture for the 9News health fairs. Donating time to this worthy cause helps people understand our medicine while gaining valuable exposure for your practice. Please keep this in mind and plan to sign up next spring!

We continue to support the first all-acupuncture medical reserve corps in the nation, the CAMRC. Please visit their booth and consider becoming a volunteer. Their trainings are free and offer 10 pda’s toward NCCAOM recertification.

Our Student Representative Brittney Chowning has been getting fellow CSTCM students involved. She coordinated a forum at the school to introduce a survey to find out how we can better serve our student members and what their concerns are.

In addition to lending her expertise to many of the board’s efforts our conference chair Stephanie Shober has coordinated this amazing record-breaking conference that we hope that you enjoy.

Last but not least, our Office Manager Charissa Haines has continued to support us in innumerable ways. Please make sure to thank her if you have the opportunity to call or email the office.

Looking forward to seeing you at the conference! If you can’t attend, I welcome the opportunity to speak with you and hear any ideas or concerns you may have.

Robin L. Schiesser, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
AAC Secretary

Treasurer Report

Katie Robinette

The AAC is off to a great start this year. We are making progress in replenishing our accounts after our recent years of large legal expenses. These expenses included the Sunset Review of our Practice Act to keep our profession regulated in Colorado, and defense against dry needling. We have big goals for the coming years, and really need to get our membership numbers up. We currently have a powerhouse board dedicated to seeing some huge issues through, so now is the time to get your friends to join. Let's see what we can accomplish together!

Katie Robinette, L.Ac.
Treasurer, Acupuncture Association of Colorado
303-909-6402
Treasurer@acucol.com

Conference & Community Chair Report -
2015 Conference will be a Record-Breaker

Stephanie Shober

This is my second year volunteering on the AAC Board and it has been an honor. The knowledge and dedication of my fellow Board members are consistently impressive.

The upcoming 32nd Annual Acupuncture Association of Colorado Conference being held April 25-26 in Colorado Springs has set an all-time record of 123 attendees for our state conferences! Meeting the venue capacity forced us to cap registration on Saturday when we will be learning from Master Jeffrey Yuen. There are still a few spots open for Sunday's excellent classes with Dr. Daisy Dong and Dr. Butch Levy. Please click here for more information and to register.

The annual conference is held in April for a couple of reasons. In election years, an early conference allows us time to come together as a group to hear about issues and candidates that effect acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in time to take action. We also hope by following spring break time, the April conference finds many people in town and able to attend. Our conference is the one fundraiser that, added to membership dues, keeps us going.

The annual business meeting of the Association being held during lunch on Saturday is a requirement of our by-laws and the one opportunity each year that we have as a group to learn what is happening legislatively for our profession, to brainstorm, and set goals.

I look forward to spending time together as a group and learning new things from the great line-up of speakers we have scheduled. See you in April!

Kind regards,

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac.
Community Committee & Conference Chair

Fundraising Report - Power Point Acupuncture Presentation on USB Flash Drive!

Sue West

I am so looking forward to seeing everyone at the 2015 AAC Conference; we are all very excited about our speakers and the entire event! I want to thank so many people who have put this together, but especially Stephanie Shober─ she has put her heart and soul into this conference.

With the opportunity to see so many of you, I will be introducing our new fundraiser this year:

USB flash drives pre-loaded with ways to educate your community! The drives will be available for a minimal donation. If you will not be able to attend the conference but would like more information, please do not hesitate to contact me at Fundraising@acucol.com.

On the 4GB flash drives we have included:

- A customizable Power Point Presentation about Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine
- Documents for you, your patients, professional contacts and community
- Media coverage on Acupuncture
- Patient education for display in your front office
- The opportunity to add additional material that we will forward as it becomes available

Of course at the conference we will also be highlighting our continuing opportunities with Zen Vault, which offers secure storage and transmittal of medical records, and Banctek, offering low-cost merchant credit card processing services. Please visit Mark VanOtterloo and me at the Fundraising Table along with our other Vendors. I look forward to seeing you all.

Warm Regards,

Sue West, L.Ac.
303-681-8856
Fundraising@acucol.com

Public Relations Report - Opportunities to Boost Your and the AAC's PR

Jacqui Strike

I am encouraged and astonished at how vibrant our Acupuncture community has become. It is fantastic to see the droves of volunteers pouring out to educate and assist our communities through the 9 News Health Fair and The CAMRC (Colorado Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps).

My term on the Board of the AAC is drawing to a close. If you are an enthusiastic self-starter, I encourage you to apply to head the PR department by writing me at PRCOMM@acucol.com.

In this position you will be a member of the AAC board for the next 3 years and your tasks will include creating and managing the subcommittees that oversee The 9 News Health Fair, AOM Day, Social Media (Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Yahoo groups). Bring your new blood to the table. This position has been extremely rewarding for me over the last 3 years. I shall value and cherish all the friendships and connections I have forged. I have no doubt I shall always be an integral and reliant volunteer for the AAC and I look forward to passing on my knowledge to the new PR Chairperson.

The 9 News Health Fair is great way to connect with Healthcare leaders in your community as well as an ideal opportunity to introduce your clinic to patients in your community. The Aurora, Mississippi Avenue Baptist church (Mississippi and I-225), needs a volunteer for the Tuesday, April 21^stFair from 7am to noon. You may sign up here or email me for more information at PRCOMM@acucol.com.

Thanks to all the volunteers who are serving their community and spreading the good word about acupuncture.

Wishing you enthusiasm and exceptional health,

Jacqui Strike, L.Ac.
Public Relations Committee Chair
720-514-0693
PRComm@acucol.com

Communications Co-Chair Report - Can You Help With Our Phone Tree Project?

Sa'bura Goodban

Thank you to all the "phone tree-ers" who have helped us as we update our email list for all acupuncturists practicing in Colorado. DORA (the Department of Registrations) does not provide us with emails, so we are collecting them one phone call at a time. Our project is not yet complete, but we are on our way. Please forgive us if you receive a call and you are already get our emails, we do our best to use up-to-date records. Always let us know if you change your contact information so we can keep our list current and keep you informed.

Being a "phone tree-er" is a valuable asset to the AAC; it allows us to contact many people in a short time. If you would like to become a volunteer "phone tree-er", you can call or email me using the contact information below. You will also have an opportunity to sign up if you are attending our conference at the end of the month. At last year’s conference a Legislative Phone Tree project was initiated. If you were on that list and wish to volunteer again, we thank you and ask that you sign up anew. We understand that events happen in our lives that keep us from having extra time to devote to a volunteer project, so if you sign up and for some reason aren’t able to help when called upon, please let us know. Thank you for your support of our profession!

Blessings,

Sa'bura Goodban, L.Ac.
Communications Co-Chair
917-664-9782
Comm.CoChair@acucol.com

Your Free Download of the
Spring Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready!

The spring issue, v. 2 #2, of Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine is now online! This and all issues are available free to you as a valuable benefit as an AAC member. To access your download just create a new account at their websiteand self-certify that you are a member of a State Association. You will be able to place an "order" for the zero-cost PDF downloads. You do not have to do this for each issue, just for the first time you access them. After initially registering, all you have to do is log in when a new issue is uploaded.

If you have any questions about access to the online issues, please feel free to contact the webmaster, Brian Smither, at webmaster@meridiansjaom.com. He will be happy to assist you so you can read this issue and all issues of Meridians JAOM.

Colorado Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps

Update and Upcoming May & June Trainings

2015 has already been an amazing and eventful year for the CAMRC. February marked the one-year anniversary since forming the first nationally-recognized acupuncture-only Medical Reserve Corps in the United States. Our volunteer membership has grown quickly and steadily, and now includes over 70 Colorado Acupuncturists and other NADA-certified practitioners.

Last month, the CAMRC offered its first Durango-area training with the help of the amazing Durango Acupuncture Alliance. We appreciate the show of support from everyone who participated and extend a warm welcome to our newest members in Southwest Colorado!

In May and June of this year, we will be offering two more trainings in Denver and Colorado Springs. Each weekend course will prepare volunteers to participate in a CAMRC disaster relief effort. The training will cover the structure of the unit, the mobilization process, the logistics of setting up and operating a mobile disaster relief clinic, the roles volunteers may find themselves in, as well as information on the NADA protocol. The training also includes a bonus 3-hour ICS 100/700 level course and certification for FEMA's Incident Command System basic instruction (a requirement for CAMRC membership). As always, these trainings are complimentary and offer 10 CEU's. What's not to love?

Please stop by and talk to us at the CAMRC booth at the upcoming conference in April with the AAC, to whom we owe tons of gratitude for their help and tireless efforts to support the practice of acupuncture in Colorado. Find out more about the organization and what you can do to support public health, your profession and your community!

Use Your AAC Member Benefits!

The AAC is always looking for new benefits to offer members that increase the value of your membership. In addition to keeping our "fingers on the pulse" (so to speak) of important issues affecting the practice of acupuncture in our state and advocating for your profession in the legislature, some your current benefits are:

Discounted CEU seminars (All seminars announced on the AAC list offer at least a 10% discount to AAC members.)
Discounted registration on all AAC conferences
Discounts with AcupunctureMediaWorks.com (10% off first order / 5% off all other orders)
Low-cost merchant credit card services with Banctek
20% off premium personal medical records storage and transmittal with Zen Vault for you and your patients with code AAC20
$15 discount on a one-year listing with alternativesforhealing.com
5% discounts with purchases from OMS/Lhasa, Blue Poppy and Redwing Books
6% Discount on Malpractice Insurance from Wood Insurance Group (Professional Members only)
Free digital copy of Meridians, a quarterly peer-reviewed Oriental Medicine journal (See announcement above)
We are currently in negotiations with Colorado Medical Waste to provide affordable Sharps disposal for our members that is more environmentally sustainable while being price competitive with mail-away disposal. Stay tuned for more information!

Please support our advertisers!!

AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Click on the link below. The PayPal option is fully-functional and we appreciate your patience as we continue to work to rectify any difficulties you may experience with our other payment options.

BECOME A MEMBER!

If you have any questions, please feel free to call Charissa Haines at the AAC Office at 303-572-8744 or email at info@acucol.com

The Colorado Acupuncturist – January 2015 edition

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 15:44:18 GMT

Jeffrey Yuen to Headline the 32nd Annual AAC Conference!

The AAC is pleased to announce information for the 2015 Annual Conference to be held April 25^th- 26^th at the beautiful Embassy Suites in Colorado Springs. 12 PDAs will be offered (NCCAOM pending).

Conference Presenters

Master Jeffrey Yuen

Jeffrey Yuen is one of the most sought after speakers on Chinese Medicine throughout the world. He is an 88th generation Daoist priest from the Jade Purity School, Lao Tzu sect and a 26th generation priest of the Complete Reality School, Dragon Gate sect. He apprenticed for more than 20 years in Classical Chinese Medicine and other Daoist healing arts with Master Yu Wen, who transmitted his lineage to Master Yuen before Master Wen’s death at the age of 108. He is recognized internationally as a Master of Acupuncture, Classical Chinese Medicine, Daoism, Chinese Herbology, Tai Chi Chuan and Qi Gong. He emphasizes the importance of Daoism in cultivating one's life and spirit to maintain health, and the use of Chinese Medicine for understanding and treating illness.

Master Yuen conveys Chinese Medicine from a deeply spiritual perspective rooted in Daoism. His ability to elucidate and bridge western medical thought within the context of Chinese medicine offers an essential clarity to his students. Currently he lives in New York where he is president of the International Tai Chi Institute, and maintains a private practice with a special focus on helping people with cancer. He will be discussing the Chinese concept of Wind and how it relates to western Psycho-Neurology.

Daisy Dong, OMD, L.Ac.
Daisy Dong is the senior Chinese medicine practitioner and the first hired clinician of the Integrative Medicine Program of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Dr. Dong received her medical training from the Beijing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and finished fellowship at Dongzhimen Hospital for Acupuncture. She also received three Master degrees in International Health, Health Administration and Oriental Medicine in the United States.

Dr. Dong has been a professor at Southwest College of Acupuncture for 14 years teaching Clinical Herbal Pharmacology and Integrative Traumatology. She has been a clinical faculty member of the University of Colorado School of Medicine teaching Integrative Medicine since 2005. Her background includes training and experience in all components of TCM including acupuncture, herbology, Tui Na, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, in addition to allopathic general medicine. She will be sharing her practical experience for running an effective evidence-based practice.

Butch Levy, MD, L.Ac.
Butch Levy is an integrative practitioner: board certified in Family Medicine and NCCAOM certified in Acupuncture. Dr. Levy has been in private practice for 37 years, including care from obstetrics and pediatrics to geriatrics and hospice care. In the late 1980’s Dr. Levy attended acupuncture school, completing many of the classes, but apprenticed with and was mentored by Miki Shima to complete his requirements for certification.

Dr. Levy’s training in Chinese Medicine is in the Japanese style of herbal diagnosis using abdominal patterns, Fukushin, and his acupuncture style is distinctly toward The Extra Vessel and Divergent Channels. Dr. Levy’s current practice integrates allopathic care with Chinese medicine and Functional Nutritional Medicine, bridging east and west with comprehensive, practical approaches to illness. He sees a wide variety of patients, and his focus of interest is toward complex chronic disease including supportive care for cancer and autoimmunity. Dr. Levy will present an overview of his style of care with a direction toward explaining his approach using the Japanese training he has been most fortunate to receive from Dr. Shima.

Conference Schedule
Saturday, April 25
7:00 – 8:00      Breakfast* / Visit Vendors
8:00 – 9:00      Registration / Visit Vendors
9:00 – 12:30    Jeffrey Yuen
Contemporary Problems: Chinese Medicine & Psycho-Neurology
12:30 – 2:00    Complimentary Lunch / Acupuncture Association of Colorado Annual Meeting
2:00 – 6:30      Jeffrey Yuen
Contemporary Problems: Chinese Medicine & Psycho-Neurology, continued
6:30 – 7:30      Post Conference Complimentary Embassy Suites Evening Reception**

Sunday, April 26
7:00 – 8:30      Breakfast* / Visit Vendors
8:30 – 12:00    Daisy Dong
An Effective Evidence-Based Acupuncture Practice
12:00 – 1:00    Complimentary Light Lunch / Visit Vendors
1:00 – 3:00      Butch Levy
An Overview of the Japanese Approach to Complex Chronic Diseases

*Complimentary cooked-to-order breakfast is for conference attendees lodging at the Embassy Suites.

** Complimentary Evening Reception is for conference attendees lodging at the Embassy Suites.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER OR TO SEE MORE INFORMATION!

Lodging
The Embassy Suites
7290 Commerce Center Drive
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80919

The AAC has arranged a suite room rate of $99/night beginning Friday, April 24. Please make your reservation before Wednesday, March 25 to guarantee a suite at this rate.
The $99 rate includes a two room suite with one king or two queen sized beds and a living room, complimentary cooked-to-order breakfast, complimentary evening reception, and complimentary parking.
Check in time is 3PM. Check out time is 12PM.
To make your reservation, please call 800-362-2779. The event name is “2015 AAC Annual Conference,” or use the following link:

LINK TO EMBASSY SUITE

Please watch your email and snail mail for registration invitations and fun incentives!

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac.
Conference Chair – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
ConferenceComm@acucol.com

WE APPRECIATE OUR EXHIBITORS!

Thanks to Golden Flower Chinese Herbs for being one of our conference sponsors. Golden Flower Chinese Herbs will be showcasing their latest Chinese herbal formulas and a fabulous line of artisan-quality essential oils. Enter the raffle at their booth for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate for the GFCH formulas of your choice during the drawing at Sunday's lunch break!

_______

We also thank Blue Poppy for being one of our conference sponsors. They offer herbal formulas at a price you can afford! They will be sponsoring Saturday's lunch!

_____

_______________________________

Message from the President – Working for Change

Happy New Year!!! As we move in to a new year it brings new opportunities. I appreciate everyone's patience as we have worked diligently to resolve the issues surrounding injection therapy. We have started a process that will once again allow acupuncturist to procure substances for injection and hopefully prevent this issue from happening in the future. It has been a long and difficult process that has involved multiple meetings with DORA, the medical society, and the pharmacy board. Again, we have come up with a solution that should permanently rectify the situation. I ask for your continued patience as we work to implement this solution.

Dry Needling has continued to be at the top of our agenda. The AAC considers dry needling to be an acupuncture technique and strongly objects to anyone practicing it who does not explicitly have the right to perform acupuncture within their scope of practice. Again, with this new year come new opportunities to protect our patients and ensure that acupuncture is only practiced by qualified practitioners. But we cannot do it without your help and support.

The only way that we can fight these battles and protect our scope of practice is through the physical and financial support of our members. We have an amazing lobbyist who is helping to educate our state representatives on the problems we are facing. We also have an extremely talented lawyer who has been working with the AAC for years and is very familiar with the legal arguments regarding dry needling. While everyone on the board is a volunteer, our lobbyist and lawyer are not. We cannot effect change without their help, and we cannot utilize their expertise without a strong membership base and financial support.

If you are tired of other professions ignorantly using our medicine and you want to utilize the full scope of your training, I strongly encourage you to come to our conference. Learn how you can take an active role in furthering our profession. Invite your friends to come. Encourage other acupuncturists to become members. It is only through unity that we will survive and thrive.

As always, I am happy to answer questions about what steps we are taking. Don't hesitate to reach out, and I look forward to seeing you in April.

Scott Richardson, L.Ac.
President – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
President@acucol.com

_______________________________

Vice President’s Report – Council of State Associations

The AAC continues to stay involved at the national level. We will be sending two reps to the annual CSA (Council of State Associations) meeting in March. The collaboration and support that we gain from attending these meetings empowers our board to be more efficient and effective for you, our members.

The CSA began as an informal networking group of state association presidents that met during annual AOM conferences. The presidents would explore issues facing their states and offer support and solutions to one another. This evolved into a more formally structured meeting referred to as the President’s Council (PC). Eventually, as additional state leaders began to join in, the PC expanded to include non-president representatives. It ultimately developed a charter, bylaws, code of conduct, and a new name: the Council of State Associations (CSA). The CSA has grown to be a collaboration among 37 state associations, representing the most inclusive umbrella yet achieved in our profession. The AAC has been involved with this group since its inception and feels it’s important to continue to be involved on behalf of Colorado acupuncturists.

As we announced last fall, the CSA is supporting a peer-reviewed journal, Meridians: The Journal of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. As a member of the AAC we are providing you with a pdf download of the Fall issue here: Meridians Journal Fall issue. When updates to our AAC website are complete we will be providing login and password information for future issues in the members’ area.

The editors of Meridians are accepting submissions for their Clinical Pearls section on the topic of Thoracic Pain by February 1^st, 2015. Please see their website http://www.meridiansjaom.com/ for more information.

I look forward to seeing you all in Colorado Springs for a fantastic conference!

Kimberley Benjamin, L.Ac.
Vice President – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
VicePresident@acucol.com

_______________________________

Treasurer Report – Technical Difficulties Being Addressed

You’ve heard the saying, “Whatever can go wrong, will.” While in the process of doing some essential website updates that certainly seems to have been true for us. We are still working out some kinks including issues with processing credit cards through authorize.net. PayPal is working fine. This should all be fixed soon, but we are so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused many of you. We are grateful to have you as fellow members, and we thank you for your patience as we diligently work within our budget to correct the problems.

Here are some of the improvements we are making: We've updated our current website as a temporary fix until we can budget in a new one that is "more responsive," as our developer likes to say. We've also switched one of our payment processors to BancTek, who is giving us excellent rates and customer service. Another update is to our membership software, which was very outdated and starting to cause problems. Last but not least, we've hired a new bookkeeper, who specializes in non-profits and will be a great asset to keeping the AAC running smoothly.

Again, we are sorry for the inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience as we continue working to improve your state association. See you in April at the conference!

Katie Robinette, L.Ac.
Treasurer – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
Treasurer@acucol.com

_______________________________

Legislation Report – 2014 Election Recap

The AAC would like to thank all of the members who contributed their hard earned money in the waning days of the election. With your help and that of our friends at Blue Poppy and CSTCM we raised a few thousand dollars in a very short period of time. It enabled us to make a strong statement to officials that we deeply care about the advancement of the profession of acupuncture. And, we all voted—right?

The AAC would also like to congratulate all of the candidates who won state house and senate seats in the November 4, 2014 election. Of the 20 candidates we supported, 15 retained or gained seats in the house and senate. We look forward to productive and meaningful relationships with all of them. Though many obstacles have been overcome by acupuncturists, many challenges lie ahead in this legislative session. With your continued membership support and participation our voices will be heard. Please don’t hesitate to introduce yourself to me at the conference in April!

George Graf, L.Ac.
Legislative Committee Chair– Acupuncture Association of Colorado
LegislativeComm@acucol.com

_______________________________

The 9News Health Fairs Are Coming!! Educate Your Community and Grow Your Practice!!

One of the best ways to create awareness of our amazing medicine is to reach out to our communities. Yes, it is that time of year again. The 9News health fairs run from late March through April in various locations across Colorado. These fairs are Interactive Educational Centers (IECs) that are comprised of many different local and statewide organizations. They provide a wide range of health, wellness and safety information and education for the community. They draw thousands of participants—prospective patients!—every year.

This is an excellent no-cost opportunity to get your name and face out into the community. I encourage everyone who has not reached full capacity in their practice to seek out the 9 News Health Fair in their area and volunteer to represent your profession through the AAC. I will be posting available health fairs both on the AAC Yahoo group and the AAC Facebook page as I receive invites. Donating your time to this worthy cause will help people understand our medicine while gaining valuable exposure for your practice. Sign up with a friend and make a fun day of it! The AAC will equip you with a 9News Health Fair Kit. Please contact me if you are interested. Then you can tell me your success story at the conference at the end of April!

Jacqui Strike, L.Ac.
Public Relations Committee Chair – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
PRComm@acucol.com

_______________________________

Student Rep Report – Student Survey Forum at CSTCM

ATTENTION STUDENTS!!

We have created a brief survey for the acupuncture student population of Colorado. We are trying to get an overview of how the students perceive the AAC as a whole and what types of services you expect from your state association. There will be a forum on Saturday, February 7th, at the Colorado School of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Denver at 12:00 p.m. to introduce the survey. Lunch will be provided as well as an opportunity to ask the president of the AAC any questions you may have. If you can't make it to the forum do not fret, there will be a copy of the survey on Survey Monkey that you can take to help us in our quest for understanding. The link will be released in a few weeks. Thank you in advance for giving us your time and opinions as the more students who respond, the better the AAC can endeavor to meet your needs. Have an excellent semester and stay sharp!

Brittney Chowning, CSTCM Student
Student Representative – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
StudentRep@acucol.com

_______________________________

AAC Membership

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The Colorado Acupuncturist – October 2014 Edition

Wed, 01 Oct 2014 18:36:05 GMT

Volume 10 / Issue 4 / October 2014

The mission of the AAC is to provide a unified voice to practitioners and students of AOM by involving and
communicating with members, educating the public, and influencing legislation to promote and protect AOM
in Colorado.

Message from the President –
An Opportunity for Change

It is rare that a week goes by and I don’t get a phone call or an email from a practitioner asking what can be done to improve an issue within our scope of practice. Right now, during this election period, every single one of us has the opportunity to let our voice be heard and help improve how our medicine is perceived and practiced in our state. We each need to learn about who is running in our area. Who is the better candidate? Who will cultivate an environment that allows us to treat our patients the best way we know how and to have a thriving practice? Please read the Legislative Chair’s report below to see key districts in this election and use ballotpedia.org to find out if you reside in one of them.

Our organization is not as big as, and does not have the funding of the other medical associations. We cannot make the same size donations that they can. The best way we can let our voice be heard is by people volunteering with a candidate and walking his or her area. It provides an opportunity to learn who your representatives are and to let them learn about who we are as a profession. We are getting calls almost daily from campaigns asking if we are going to contribute again to specific candidates. Believe me when I say that they remember who donated and volunteered when it comes time to vote on a piece of legislation. We need as many of you out there as possible representing our profession and helping to move it forward.

The AAC needs to make more donations before the election. If you can contribute any amount at all to help us make an impact, please use this secure PayPal button.

We have a big year coming up. There are problems that need to be fixed and we have an amazing group of people working to make that happen. If there are issues coming up that you don’t like, please help us make a change. If you want to see this powerful medicine be more fully utilized within our healthcare system, help us make that happen. We cannot do it alone. We are here to represent you and the only way we can do that effectively is if you work with us.

Again, we have an amazing group of professionals on the AAC board. I feel honored to have the opportunity to work with them. If you don’t know who we are, or don’t know the issues we are facing, please—come to a meeting, introduce yourself, and take an active role in our profession.

Scott Richardson, M.S., L.Ac.
President – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
President@acucol.com

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Legislation Report –
November 4^th Election Alert!

There are many tight legislative races in Colorado this election and the AAC is doing all we can for state legislative candidates who advocate for acupuncturists. In August Leo Boyle (our awesome lobbyist) and I went to a fundraising event in downtown Denver that was well attended by many of the candidates who support acupuncturists. We handed out our budgeted $2000 in campaign contributions to key candidates to remind them we are here and want to be counted. Unfortunately that amount is a drop in the bucket compared to other organizations that were giving the maximum amount of $400 per candidate. Our budget only allowed us to give half that to the candidates at this event (and there are others who are calling daily to ask if we can support them again this year). This was a soft touch event and I was still able to bend the ears of several candidates, reminding them of our continued plights: fighting professional discrimination, not being able to procure injectables, getting to the table to achieve essential health benefit status and the dry needling controversy—I was a bit of a nudge.

Now that we have dipped as deeply as we could into our coffers, we are asking you, AAC members, to contact campaigns in your districts and give your time by phone banking, giving a personal money contribution or door knocking. This would be great exposure for us professionally and can really make a difference for these legislative campaigns that operate on shoestring budgets. The election is just a few weeks away and the candidates in your districts can really use your help in the home stretch.

Here is a list of candidates in key races that you can contact. Their websites are easy to find by searching their names. You can use www.ballotpedia.org to easily find out if you reside in one of these key senate and house districts.

Rhonda	Fields	rhonda.fields.house@state.co.us	303-866-3911	HD 42
Joann	Ginal	joann.ginal.house@state.co.us	303-866-4569	HD 52
Jenise	May	jenise.may.house@state.co.us	303-866-2945	HD 30
Elizabeth	McCann	beth.mccann.house@state.co.us beth@bethmccann.org	303-866-2959	HD 8
Dianne	Primavera	dianne.primavera.house@state.co.us	303-866-4667	HD 3
Jonathan	Singer	jonathan.singer.house@state.co.us	303-866-2780	HD 11
Dave	Young	dave.young.house@state.co.us dave@repdaveyoung.com	303-866-2929	HD 50
Irene	Aguilar	irene.aguilar.senate@state.co.us	303-866-4852	SD 32
Jeanne	Nicholson	jeanne.nicholson.senate@state.co.us	303-866-4873	SD 16
Leroy	Garcia	leroy.garcia.house@state.co.us	303-866-2968	HD 46
Tracy	Kraft Tharp	reptracy29@gmail.com	303-866-2950	HD 29
Mike	Foote	mike.foote.house@state.co.us	303-866-2920	HD 12
Su	Ryden	su.ryden.house@state.co.us	303-866-2942	HD 36
Mike	McLachlan	mike.mclachlan.house@state.co.us	303-866-2914	HD 59
Max	Tyler	max@maxtyler.us	303-866-2951	HD 23
Judy	Solano	judysolano4senate@gmail.com		SD 24
Rachel	Zenzinger	SenatorRachelZ@gmail.com	303-866-4840	SD 19
Pete	Lee	pete.lee.house@state.co.us	303-866-2932	HD 18

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. Thank you.

George Graf, MTOM, L.Ac.
Legislative Committee Chair
LegislativeComm@acucol.com
(719) 278-9696

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Treasurer Report – Political Contributions Limited by Low Funds

In this election year our lobbyist Leo Boyle carefully chose candidates for our $2,000 contribution budget this year. He requested an extra $3,000 to keep our contributions on par with the physical therapists and chiropractors. Unfortunately, we were unable to comply. These other organizations have triple the membership and higher dues than we have. Our political fund consists of half of the dues we collect. We use this fund to pay our lobbyist, to pay our lawyers when they are combating issues such as dry needling, and also for campaign contributions to keep our interests in our legislators’ minds. In Colorado we still have 70 percent of acupuncturists who are not yet members of the AAC. Please help us spread the word that their support would make a big difference!

I once again want to thank all board members for a terrific job. Their work shows on the home page of the AAC website, it shows on YouTube, it shows on Facebook, and we are showing all of this to the public. BRAVO!

Katie Robinette, L.Ac.
Treasurer – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
Treasurer@acucol.com

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Fundraising Chair Report

The Fundraising committee has been busy promoting classes through Standard Process with Michael Gaeta as the presenter. June’s class on the Thyroid was held at SWAC, September’s class on the Autoimmune System was just held in Castle Rock, and we can look forward to the class on the Cardiovascular System October 29th at CSTCM. These classes have been fundraisers for us. With the money made we will be able to provide public forums on acupuncture at libraries, “lunch and learn” classes at key businesses, and education on the benefits of our services to insurance companies. We are currently developing a PowerPoint presentation to allow anyone to be able to present, educate, and spread the word.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Angie Pierce, Deb and David Martin and Mark VanOtterloo for coming forward to volunteer their services to the AAC board and its committees. This is a great time for our profession and a great opportunity to serve on the board, so again, I thank you.

Sue West, MA, L.Ac.
Fundraising Chair
Fundraising@acucol.com

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It’s Not Too Late to Promote AOM DAY and Revitalize Your Practice!

As you probably already know, AOM Day is observed nationally on October 24^th as part of an effort to increase public awareness of the progress, promise, and benefits of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Both Governor Hickenlooper and Denver Mayor Michael Hancock have proclaimed October 24^th as Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Day in Colorado again this year.

The Colorado Acupuncture Association would like to see as many events in the state as possible during October. You don’t have to stick with one day! Several marketing packets have been created to help you generate campaigns. Consider putting an event together yourself, or join with other practitioners in your area. In these toolkits are helpful descriptions for setting up health fairs and how to re-activate your patient contacts. You can download them all here Free Toolkits. Click here AOM Day for more information.

The Council of State Associations has prepared materials to help us all implement a National AOM Day Outreach Campaign. Click here to download the Council of State Associations’ Outreach Toolkit.

Acupuncture Media Works has been a generous supporter of this event. They have been instrumental in the creation of a free marketing kit and will donate profits to the Council of State Associations from the sale of AOM Day brochures that you can personalize with your clinic name.

We want to hear back from everyone what events you are planning. AAC Members can post on the Yahoo Group email what you are offering so we have a full calendar of events listed on our website. You can also submit your event to be listed on the national AOM Day website. Let’s see how big an impact we can make!

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Zombie Apocalypse!

Halloween morning Friday, October 31^st, Longmont United Hospital will hold a mock disaster drill with the theme of “Zombie Apocalypse”. The drill, which will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., will simulate an authentic zombie Armageddon, complete with moulage and tons of fun! The Colorado Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps has been invited to set up a disaster clinic at the event, and volunteers are needed to treat an estimated 100 people with the NADA protocol. ANY Colorado licensed acupuncturist may participate; you do not need to be a CAMRC member to volunteer.

Please contact Monica Edlauer if you are willing to brave the zombie apocalypse!

CONTACT THE FOLLOWING

Monica Edlauer, MSOM, L.Ac.
boulderacupuncture@comcast.net
(303) 859-7556

_______________

AAC Membership

There are options to becoming a member of the AAC. You can make a once yearly payment or use our automatic monthly payment option. Click on the link below.

BECOME A MEMBER!

The Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2014 edition

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:33:35 GMT

Volume 10 / Issue 3 / July 2014

2015 Conference Save the Date &

2014 Conference Feedback

The 2015 AAC Annual Conference will be Saturday, April 25 through Sunday, April 26. Based on survey feedback, the conference will be held south of Denver in the vicinity of Castle Rock or Colorado Springs. Please mark your calendars!

Thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the 2014 conference. Here is what some of you had to say:

“The AAC is doing great re: keeping our profession in the ‘light’ – Rock On!!”

“Best conference in at least 2-3 years.”

“Time management was off. Maybe shorten the presentations.”

“The facility, while a cool old building, just was NOT a good place for this conference.”

“The facility (lodge) was awesome.”

“Great location, easy parking. Too long a day for both days.”

“Including the business meeting as a part of the conference was a mistake. It made the AM session on Sunday way too long. Loved the Tai Chi!”

“All you ask of us is $$$ and everything is always in Denver/Boulder.”

“Excellent. Informative about current and future issues concerning our profession.”

These survey comments are a good example of the many responses we received. We appreciate the feedback and are using it to shape the 2015 conference.

These are the areas attendees said they want the AAC to focus efforts:

Dry Needling
Public education campaign about L.Ac. training versus DC, PT, etc.
Loan forgiveness programs
Getting primary health care designation for acupuncturists
Lobbying
National level of organization
DOM status
Help with starting a business
Protection of scope

Thank you again for your participation and feedback, and for your membership support. Happy Summer!

Stephanie Shober, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Conference Committee Chair
ConferenceComm@acucol.com

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Report from the President – Injection Therapy Status

I know many of you have been following the injection therapy status. It has been a frustrating battle and we have good news and bad news. We have been working with DORA for the past 6 months to try and create a solution, but unfortunately there is nothing that we can do until the next legislative session in January. That means that for the next 6 months there are going to be limitations on being able to procure B12 and other substances for injection. So what’s the good news?

Through this process, we have been working with the Colorado Medical Society (CMS) and the pharmacy association. Both organizations are supporting us getting the ability to procure the substances to do injection therapy. The CMS has also stated that they will help us write the bill for the next legislative session that will become law. I am not aware of any other time in our association’s history when the medical society has been as supportive and helpful to our profession in maintaining its scope of practice as they are right now. I believe that this is a great step forward in increasing communication between our two professions and building bridges that will only help us in the future.

The other aspect of this is that when we pass this bill it will be law, and hopefully we will not have to deal with this again.

I am sorry for the issues and frustrations that this has caused many of us trying to run a practice and provide the best care we can to our patients. There are a few places around the country that are rumored to be selling to LAcs. If you know of any, please tell your fellow practitioners. If you need help purchasing, especially B12, send me an email and I will do my best to help.

Remember, the state still recognizes our ability to do injection therapy. If you are able to obtain the substances for injection, you can still do it. It is our ability to procure the substances necessary for injection therapy that we are trying to get back.

Scott Richardson M.S., L.Ac.
President – Acupuncture Association of Colorado
President@AcuCol.com

______________________

Legislation Report

Members are always asking what their association is doing for them. Your board is working hard within the political machinery on several important issues. The first one is getting legislation passed so that we can get prescriptive authority to procure substances for injection therapy. Through an oversight at DORA when a new bill was passed for the pharmacy industry in 2006 we were not included as being able to buy the substances that we have always purchased for injection. The problem has only been recently identified and was not on the radar screen when we did our sunset review. We have been working with the Colorado Medical Society and DORA and the Pharmacy board to come to a resolution. At this time it looks like we will have to have a bill passed by the legislature.

THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN: To get legislation passed we need FRIENDS in the legislature. To make friends we need to help our friends get elected.THIS IS AN ELECTION YEAR. This summer we need each member to be a registered voter. It doesn’t matter how you identify yourself. Register as an independent if you don’t know where you fit in the political system. Be sure and VOTE in the November election.

Why does this matter? If we need you to call your legislator in the winter a staff member will check to see if you are a voter that needs to be paid attention to or if you are of no consequence because you do not vote.

EVEN BETTER: find out who is running in your legislative district and offer to work on their campaign or send in a donation. Go talk to the candidates. Let them know that you are an acupuncturist. Stuff envelopes or offer to walk a neighborhood with them. Your board is working very hard for all of us. We cannot do this alone.Legislators want to hear from their constituents (people who elect them and that they represent).

Dry needling is still on our radar and we continue to work on an effective strategy and long term solution to this thorny issue.

We are also working behind the scenes to see how we can get a seat at the table so that we can be included as an essential health benefit in the part of the Affordable Care Act that goes into effect in 2016 that includes “alternative therapies.”

George Graff is working to organize us into effective legislative district groups that can be mobilized on short notice when we need to influence legislation. Please return his call or e-mail if you are contacted by him.

Thank you for your membership, your support and interest, and all that you do to help our community.

Anne Chew, L.Ac.
Legislative Committee Chair
LegislativeComm@acucol.com

______________________

Secretary Report

Hi! My name is Robin Schiesser and I am the new Secretary for the Board of Directors. Even though I’d been a member of the AAC off and on for the past several years, last April’s conference was the first I’d attended and it really opened my eyes! This is an exciting and challenging time for our profession: We have the opportunity to be included as an essential health benefit in Colorado under the Affordable Care Act. We could receive our own professional classification under the Bureau of Labor and Statistics’ Standards Occupational Classification. We are facing discrimination by insurance companies for reimbursement of the services we are trained to provide and are trying to re-gain the right to procure injectables. These issues take time, energy and financial support. After practicing quietly for 12 years (four in Los Angeles, and eight in Boulder) I decided it was time to pony up and give back to the profession that I’ve so deeply enjoyed.

I’ll be supporting the Board by working with our Office Manager and Newsletter Editor, Charissa Haines; coordinating the agenda and keeping minutes of our board meetings, which have increased to twice quarterly due to the amount of work to be done; and helping other committees with their projects as needed.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions, concerns or ideas. Most of all–please consider volunteering for a committee and encourage any acupuncturist friends you have that aren’t members of the AAC to join. As we all know, medical doctors, chiropractors and physical therapists are very well organized and their professional associations have large numbers of members. That translates into greater financial and political power. Together we can turn up the volume on the voice of Acupuncture!

Robin L. Schiesser, L.Ac., Dipl. OM
Secretary
Secretary@acucol.com

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Easing the Pain of an Acupuncturist-less Birth

Announcing Acupuncture Services in Labor and Delivery

at Boulder Community Health

When I was pregnant with my first child in 2001, I looked for a hospital in the area which offered midwife-led births and alternative medicine services. Unfortunately, these services were nonexistent in Boulder at the time. Thankfully, by the time I was pregnant with my third child, and newly licensed as an acupuncturist, the multifaceted health options for which Boulder was renowned had resurfaced at Boulder Community Hospital (now Boulder Community Health). The hospital was blessed with the Boulder Nurse Midwives, a team of exceptionally loving and gifted birth professionals.

My midwives provided an amazingly supportive team, but I was determined to further enhance my birth experience with acupuncture. So, naturally I brought my own needles to the hospital. After 24 hours of leisurely labor, I became impatient and decided it was time have a baby. I treated myself as enthusiastically as I could, in the places I could reach, and went into transition shortly after pulling out the needles. Little Eevee made her appearance 20 minutes later.

So who wouldn’t want the extraordinary support of acupuncture to reduce pain, increase the efficacy and expedience of labor, and support mom’s and baby’s health during delivery? Of course this became a priority in my private practice. My patients knew they could rely on acupuncture and herbal medicine to support them through fertility, conception, pregnancy, labor, and the postpartum period. Full service!

Several years after my BCH birth, another one of my dreams manifested itself, and I became credentialed to practice acupuncture in the hospital – one of a handful of acupuncturists on staff as Allied Health practitioners. We worked hard to provide treatments to inpatients in every department where acupuncture services were requested. Every department save one.

Acupuncturists at BCH have lacked the legal department’s clearance to treat patients in the Family Birth Center’s Labor and Delivery unit. To perform acupuncture in labor would have required an additional malpractice insurance addendum. The price tag on this particular addendum: up to $12,000 annually in addition to their current premium. An impossible amount for just about any acupuncturist.

For two years I tried to find a way to bring acupuncture into L&D, spending hours of time calling, emailing, and note-writing the credentialing, legal, insurance, and birth center powers-that-be. I looked for loopholes in the legalese. I sought alternative malpractice coverage through a variety of companies. I appealed to the Center for Integrative Care at BCH to extend their department to complementary care in the Birth Center. I solicited letters of support from the ever-willing midwives and local acupuncture college. I sought employment directly through Family Birth Center. I went as far as to consider going back to school for a nursing degree so that I could become an employee of the hospital and gain privileges to the birth center directly. All, to no avail.

The turning point actually came at this year’s Acupuncture Association of Colorado Annual Conference. Drew Henderson (also credentialed at BCH) and I both approached Marilyn Allen of the American Acupuncture Council to see what could possibly be done to make acupuncture in labor a feasible possibility for us. She said she would get back to us after the conference. It almost sounded promising.

We did hear back, and what we heard was even more promising than we’d hoped. “You are covered,” Marilyn said. I wanted to frame those words in sunshine and hang them on the wall! But first, I needed to spend another couple of months emailing back and forth with the insurance underwriters, BCH credentialing, and the legal department to finalize and fine tune 7 pages of Acu-Labor-Addendum-ese and spend a few hundred (NOT a few thousand) dollars. SO WORTH IT!

And as of June 26th, 2014 I am able to proudly announce (drum roll please)… Acupuncture Services in Labor and Delivery at Boulder Community Health! I feel like this has been my longest labor ever. Thank goodness for acupuncture to ease the pain.

Monica Edlauer, MSOM, L.Ac.
AAC Member and CAMRC Volunteer

______________________

Communications Co-Chair Report

Hello, I am excited to be a board member of the Acupuncture Association of Colorado. I think our profession is awesome, and I joined the board to support our ability to be successful providers of this amazing medicine here in Colorado. Hopefully, we will serve as an inspiration for providers of this ancient art and science across the nation. Improving public awareness and access to this healing art is a big deal in today’s age of environmental toxicity and seemingly limited answers.

My role is Co-Chair of Communications, and some of the things I’m working on right now are:

Working with Carol Braverman, Chair of Public Education, to increase education of the public through increased media messaging (acupuncture is awesome!), and toward that end, making the AAC YouTube channel a place for posting videos that serve to educate about our chosen field.
Working with Jacqui Strike, Committee Chair of Public Relations, to increase knowledge for those in our profession on ways they can improve their success as practitioners, educators and activists through providing posts to information on AAC’s Facebook page. (And every video posted on the YouTube channel will have a link from the Facebook page for streamlining.)
Serving as a liaison with the student council of Southwest’s Acupuncture College in Boulder so that they know what actions we are taking to further our profession. And to encourage them to take action now and after graduation.

Hopefully you find the idea of acupuncture having a stronger sway on public opinion to be a step in the right direction. Please share if you feel inclined! If you have videos on Chinese Medicine that you think should be on the AAC YouTube channel, or if you have articles on Chinese Medicine that you think should be on the AAC Facebook page, please e-mail me at: Comm.CoChair@acucol.com.

Sa’bura J. Goodban, L.Ac., DOM, RMT, NCTMB, MSW
Communications Co-Chair
Comm.CoChair@acucol.com

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Fundraising Chair Report

I would like to congratulate and welcome our new members to the AAC. I look forward to working with you and will plan a visit with you to see how we can all work together. Please contact me at anytime. We all would love your ideas and help.

I do want to thank all of the board members, and in particular Stephanie Shober, for a fantastic conference this year! We want to spread the word about our medicine and this conference was especially helpful.

We had the opportunity to meet Brad Claus, the COO of Zen Vault, at the conference where he was very helpful in meeting and talking to the members about Zen Vault. Brad has just informed us about the new opportunities that Zen Vault has to offer such as the technology to correspond with our patients via HIPAA-compliant e-mail. Please go to our website under Special Events to learn more about Zen Vault and all of the benefits in becoming a member. Remember to enter code AAC20 to receive 20% off Zen Vault.

BancTec is a new fundraising project for the AAC. We have teamed up with BancTec to provide credit card processing for our businesses. BancTec provides more benefits for our members and a profit sharing opportunity for the AAC.

We are working hard to provide education and advertising of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Please access our AAC website often to see all of the updates and member benefits that we are adding.

We are working with Michael Gaeta to present two fundraising classes this fall. These classes are 3 hours, giving you 3 CEU’s. We will hold a class on the Autoimmune System October 2nd, 6pm to 9pm, at the Library in Monument, Colorado. This gives everyone who practices south of Denver easy access to one of our classes. The next class will be held at CSTCM on October 29th, 6pm to 9pm, and will be on Blood Sugar. E-mail’s will be forthcoming to sign up for these events.

I encourage you to go to our website often to see all of the activities from all of the committees. We have a busy and fun filled year ahead of us creating unity, education, and advertising of our great Medicine.

I hope to see you soon.

Sincerely,
Sue West MA, L.Ac.
Fundraising Chair
Fundraising@acucol.com

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Recruiting Acupuncture
Medical Reserve Corps Regional Coordinators

What A Regional Coordinator Does

Networks your area to recruit volunteers
Keeps a list of CAMRC volunteers in your region
Helps to schedule local trainings if enough interested people want to become volunteers
Is a resource for local volunteers
Works with the incident command during an event
Stores incident ready kit for your area
Coordinators do not have to be the Incident Commander if an incident occurs in your area!!!

Applicant must be a CAMRC registered volunteer or intend to be within the next month.

Please email me at lisa.nicodemus@gmail.com if you are interested in being a regional coordinator or have any questions!

11 Regions In Colorado:

North Central (AA): Eastlake, Westminster, Brighton, Englewood, Greenwood Village, Northglenn, Centennial, Aurora, Denver, Thornton, Littleton

North Central (BBG): Golden, Boulder, Niwot, Longmont, Lyons, Louisville, Jamestown, Allenspark, Lafayette, Broomfield, Hygiene, Nederland, Longmont

North Central (DE): Highlands Ranch, Parker, Elizabeth, Castle Rock, Lone tree, Franktown, Sedalia, Littleton

North Central (Denver): Denver

North Central (JC): Denver, Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Arvada, Broomfield, Pine, Golden, Morrison, Evergreen, Kittredge, Edgewood, Westminster, Conifer

North East: Denver, Wheat Ridge, Lakewood, Arvada, Broomfield, Pine, Golden, Morrison, Evergreen, Kittredge, Edgewood, Westminster, Conifer

San Luis Valley: Crestone, Antonio, Moffat, Alamosa

South Central: Colorado Springs, Salida, Palmer Lake, Leadville, Buena Vista, Cascade, Florissant, Woodland Park

West/Southwest: Durango, Pagosa Springs, Gunnison, Montose, Cortez, Delta, Paonia, Dolores, Cedaredge, Bayfield, Helperus, Ridgeway, Telluride, Ophir, Telluride, Crested Butte

South/Southwest:

Regional Coordinator: Gloria Cappetto- gcappetto1@gmail.com

Pueblo, Florence, Canon City, Cuchara, West Cliffe

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Public Relations Report

In true fashion, the Year of the Wooden Horse has speedily and deliberately raced by. Wow, we have six more months to go until this year is recorded in history. So what would our highest and best self do in the next six months to make this year memorable?

First of all, reflection! Thank you to all of those who helped out with the Nine News Health Fair. Once again your communities thank you for your participation and education. I hope, in return, you received a growth in your business and a clearer idea of how to present yourself in front of the public. We do have a few more Nine News Health Fair events happening in Aurora in October if you would be interested in introducing yourself to your community. Keep an eye on the AAC Facebook page, and/or Yahoo Group for further details. Of course you may always contact me at PRcomm@acucol.com

This year we teamed up with the Colorado Acupuncture Emergency Response Corps (COMRC) and had a display at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. The intention was to do sample treatments but with the temperatures being in the upper nineties this was not conducive. We hope to do this event again next year so keep the weekend of the 4th of July on your radar if you would like to volunteer.

What is next? Our next event that all acupuncturists can use to cheaply advertise and draw more clients is Oriental Medicine Day (AOM day). The 24th of October is proclaimed AOM day by both Mayor Michael B. Hancock of Denver, and Governor John Hickenlooper of Colorado. We will be sending out useful tips on how to introduce yourself to the community and in return attract potential clients.

Our work on the Non Profit Chapter of the AAC, The Colorado Acupuncture Outreach and Education, is not yet complete and so my task is to gallop on and have this project finalized so that we can better assist all the Non Profit ventures in Colorado. For example, the Colorado Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps (CAMRC) and the Acupuncture for Veterans and their Families (VAF). We would also like to sponsor summertime booths at farmer’s markets around Colorado to introduce local volunteer acupuncturists to their communities. If you would like to serve on the committee of the Colorado Acupuncture Outreach and Education, Non Profit subsidiary of the AAC, do email me at PRcomm@acucol.com.

The CAMRC is currently recruiting regional coordinators. Look at their article (above) to see if you qualify.

Make these next 6 months of the Year of the Wooden Horse count. Get into your flow and participate in your acupuncture community as well as your neighborhoods.

Jacqui Strike, LAc., MSCTM, CMT

Public Relations Committee Chair
PRComm@acucol.com

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Legislative Committee Chair Report

Hi my name is George Graf. I am a licensed acupuncturist here in Colorado and the new Legislative Committee Chair for the Acupuncture Association of Colorado, I’m honored and gratified to have been given this opportunity. I’ll do the best I can to make a meaningful contribution to our profession and I know that I have a great mentor in Anne Chew who has done a fantastic job over the past several years as the Legislative Committee Chair.

The legislative challenges we face will take time and patience to resolve and we will need the whole acupuncture community to be involved in some way to overcome these challenges. Everything from voting to participating in the legislative phone tree. We need to respond quickly to regulatory issues that can have a profound affect on our ability to practice without being discriminated against by insurance, DORA and other health care interests.

I have been practicing in Colorado Springs for the past 14 years and 2 years previously in California. I enjoy a thriving practice here, but I am aware that this is not the case for some acupuncturists in Colorado and that is a travesty. Everyone in our profession should be busy helping people with their health and wellness. We are the only experts in using needles to promote healing. No other profession can even come close when it comes to acupuncture or anything remotely looking like acupuncture. We are it; we should be confident that we have the most and best training in our field. But in Colorado professional discrimination has created barriers for acupuncturists to build busy practices.

The reason I joined the AAC this past March and then accepted the position on the board, was that it became abundantly clear to me that a small group of people on the AAC board had worked tirelessly to protect our profession from deregulation and manipulation by other health care interests. Those changes would’ve put me and you out of business–I didn’t want to move back to California.

Over the next several weeks I will be calling as many acupuncturists as possible to say hi and to get e-mail addresses of non-members of the AAC so that we can keep you informed about legislative issues, too.

George Graf, L.Ac.
Legislative Committee Chair
Communications@acucol.com

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Acupuncture Association of Colorado News

Monthly Newsletter - January 2021

Monthly Newsletter - September 2020

The Colorado Acupuncturist - July 2019

The Colorado Acupuncturist Newsletter - July 15, 2018

September 8,9,10, 2018

The Colorado Acupuncturist Newsletter - April 15, 2018

The Colorado Acupuncturist - January 2018

AAC Legal Challenge to Dry Needling Continues & Conference Registration is Open

The Colorado Acupuncturist – October 2017

Dry Needling Update, Conference, Dāo Needle Class & Other AAC News

The Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2017

Dry Needling Update & Other AAC News

The Colorado Acupuncturist - April 2017

The Colorado Acupuncturist - January 2017 Edition

Colorado Acupuncturist - October 2016 Edition

Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2016 Edition

Message from the President: New Website, Dry Needling, and Strategic Partnerships

Colorado State Elections: 2016 Voter and Volunteer Guide

Kiiko Matsumoto at the 34th Annual AAC Conference

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Your Free Summer Issue of the Meridians Journal is Ready for Download!

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Colorado Acupuncturist - April 2016 Edition

Conference Update: Record Numbers & Annual Meeting

Message from the President: Dry Needling, ASA & Website Updates

Finance Update & Looking for Our Next Treasurer

Injectables Update

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Colorado Acupuncturist - January 2016 Edition

Lonny Jarrett at the 33rd Annual Acupuncture Association of Colorado Conference at the Marriott Westminster

The Conference Schedule

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Message from the President: Dry Needling, Injectables and the ASA

Order Your Year of the Monkey T-Shirt by January 24th!

Finance Report: Stretching our Funds and Looking for Our Next Treasurer

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Making the Case for Acupuncture Instead of Opiates

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Colorado Acupuncturist - October 2015 Edition

Message from the President

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New Treasurer Needed: Get Experience Running a Non-Profit while Advancing Our Profession!

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From the Public Relations Chair

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33rd Annual AAC Conference at the Marriott Westminster

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Your Free Fall Issue of the Meridians Journal is Ready for Download!

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In Memory of Fundraising Chair Sue West

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The Colorado Acupuncturist – July 2015 edition

My Mission as President: Value for our Members

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Injection Therapy Update

What goes on at AAC Board Meetings? Building a Stronger Profession–Together!

Annual Conference Update: 2015 Feedback & Lonny Jarrett in 2016!

Are you prepared? The Colorado Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps is!

Your Free Download of the Summer Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready!

Student Rep Update: New Student Facebook Page Under Construction

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The Adventures of an Acupuncturer: 35 Years Behind the Needle A Clinical Autobiography of Qigong Acupuncture

By James MacRitchie

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The Colorado Acupuncturist – April 2015 edition

President's Report - Much Accomplished and More on the Horizon

Vice President's Report - You are an Acupuncturist!

Secretary Report

Treasurer Report

Conference & Community Chair Report - 2015 Conference will be a Record-Breaker

Fundraising Report - Power Point Acupuncture Presentation on USB Flash Drive!

Public Relations Report - Opportunities to Boost Your and the AAC's PR

Communications Co-Chair Report - Can You Help With Our Phone Tree Project?

Your Free Download of the Spring Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready!

Kiiko Matsumoto at the 34^th Annual AAC Conference

Order Your Year of the Monkey T-Shirt by April 24^th!

Order Your Year of the Monkey T-Shirt by January 24^th!

33^rd Annual AAC Conference at the Marriott Westminster

What goes on at AAC Board Meetings?
Building a Stronger Profession–Together!

Annual Conference Update:
2015 Feedback & Lonny Jarrett in 2016!

Are you prepared? The Colorado
Acupuncture Medical Reserve Corps is!

The Adventures of an Acupuncturer: 35 Years Behind the Needle
A Clinical Autobiography of Qigong Acupuncture

Conference & Community Chair Report -
2015 Conference will be a Record-Breaker

Your Free Download of the
Spring Issue of Meridians Journal is Ready!

Message from the President –
An Opportunity for Change

Legislation Report –
November 4^th Election Alert!

Recruiting Acupuncture
Medical Reserve Corps Regional Coordinators