In 2005, the leaders of eight national AOM organizations began to meet each year in Columbia, MD for informal dialogue about topics of interest to the AOM profession. At their most recent meeting on March 21, 2009, the organizations agreed to engage in joint strategic planning later in the year under the professional facilitation of Marilyn Snider of Snider and Associates and established a joint planning committee to make arrangements for this event. The impetus for this decision arose from the momentum created by the inclusion of AOM as part of the Institute of Medicine’s National Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public, which had been held only a few weeks earlier on February 25-27, 2009 in Washington, DC, and the desire of the organizations to have AOM included as part of the ongoing health reform efforts at the federal level.

On September 21, 2009, a leadership team from each organization assembled in San Francisco and developed a strategic plan (attached) that reflects the strong desire of the participating organizations for closer mutual collaboration to advance the AOM profession in the United States. The San Francisco meeting was attended by representatives of the American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AAAOM), Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (ACAOM), American Organization for Bodywork Therapies of Asia (AOBTA), Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (CCAOM), Federation of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Regulatory Agencies (FAOMRA), National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), National Federation of Chinese Traditional Chinese Medicine Organizations (NFCTCMO), and Society for Acupuncture Research (SAR).

The agenda for the San Francisco meeting was established in close collaboration with Ms. Snider and was designed as a “process agenda” that would allow substantive issues to emerge organically during the meeting itself. The development of the strategic plan was aided at the meeting by a preliminary sharing of wholly individual perceptions concerning various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that the representatives believed were associated with the AOM profession today. Under the skilled guidance of Ms. Snider, the group then proceeded by consensus to develop a 5-year vision statement that declares: “By 2014, acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM), an independent, licensed profession, will be fully accessible to the public throughout American health care.” The vision statement is intended to be a collective expression by the attending organizations of what they hope to achieve by 2014 through their joint collaboration. To implement the vision statement, the organizations developed a strategic plan consisting of four 3-year goals, as follows:

Promote research, education, public awareness, and outreach
Increase job opportunities for AOM graduates in all health care settings
Obtain federal recognition for the profession
Achieve licensure and parity in 50 states and the District of Columbia

These goals are not intended to be in priority order as each has significant importance in its own right. Associated with each goal are specific and measurable objectives or “action items” to ensure that there is individual accountability for implementation of the strategic plan by specific dates. The action items touch upon many areas of interest to the organizations, such as the first-professional doctorate, mutual assistance in publicizing the activities of each organization, inter-organizational cooperation for public relations/marketing, AOM research, AOM graduate success, federal recognition of AOM under Medicare and by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, enactment of new AOM practice acts in states where licensure does not currently exist, and several specific items to promote Asian Bodywork Therapy at the federal and state levels.