Integrative Healthcare: a definition

The definition of “integrative health” has been in a state of flux since the late 1990s, when its once dubious, if not rebuked and scorned, primary therapies began to come into conventional clinical and research settings and the NIH began serious investigations into their merits.

Its earliest forms, from the late 1990’s, were defined in the context of care and treatment qualities that practitioners were determined to make part of the conventional (allopathic) care establishment.  By 2017, the focus on diagnosis and treatment parity has evolved to encompass both therapeutic treatment values but also a broader understanding of care for the whole person, the concept that has actually been the animating attribute of integrative practice since the beginning.

The Institute of Integrative Health, TIIH, closely associated with the University of Maryland Medical School’s Center for Integrative Medicine (CIM) in Baltimore has offered a new definition that reflects this new and expansive understanding of health. It also defines how healthcare professions and the institutions that support them should now view the influences on their patients’ health and therefore on their own work.

 

Integrative health is a state of wellbeing in body, mind and spirit that reflects aspects of the individual, community, and population. It is affected by 1) individual biological factors and behaviors, social values, and public policy, 2) the physical, social, and economic environment, and 3) an integrative healthcare system that involves the active participation of the individual in the healthcare team in applying a broad spectrum of preventive and therapeutic approaches. Integrative health encourages individuals, social groups, and communities to develop ways of living that promote meaning, resilience and well-being across the life course.

For more from TIIH on its new definition, see its site here.