A new cohort of residents has joined the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare system’s Chiropractic Residency Program this year. Three chiropractors participating in the program – Vivian Ly, DC, Danielle Aslan, DC, and Dr. Jamie Zeman, DC – will continue ACA’s blog series on the residency program over the next year, sharing their experiences as well as lessons learned working as part of an integrated hospital team.

More than 120 Student ACA (SACA) members gathered Sept. 7-9 in Milwaukee, Wis., for the 2018 SACA Leadership Conference, an annual event promoting leadership development and community building. “The Leadership Conference is the place where it all seems to come together, where attendees not only learn how to be better leaders and better future healthcare providers, but also how to be great colleagues and even friends,” writes student Jocelyn Tierney, SACA national vice chair. Highlighting the event was a diverse line-up of the profession’s leaders, who shared their insights on leadership and personal development.

On Sept. 6, 2018, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed H.R. 302, the “Sports Medicine Licensure Clarity Act of 2017.” The legislation, also referred to as “Travel to Treat,” would ensure that sports health professionals are covered by their malpractice insurance while traveling to another state with athletic teams. As lawmakers drafted this legislation, the American Chiropractic Association worked to ensure that doctors of chiropractic, along with other providers, were included in the bill’s final language.

It has been just over a year since many in the chiropractic profession first learned that the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) joined more than 80 medical specialty society partners to participate in an initiative that is sponsored by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation. This initiative’s mission is to “promote conversations between clinicians and patients by helping patients choose care that is supported by evidence, not duplicative of other tests or procedures already received, free from harm, and truly necessary.” It is called the Choosing Wisely campaign¹ and it has generated more spirited discussion among doctors of chiropractic than I can recall since release of the Mercy Conference Proceedings in 1993.

While a chiropractic student, I traveled with a group of medical providers to a community in Ghana to provide supplies, assist with health screens in remote villages, and work in a local hospital within a variety of departments. During my time there, I interviewed different community members employed by the hospital or by non-governmental organizations working with the hospital about their perceived health burdens and openness to chiropractic. Unexpectedly, interviewees expressed that while they practiced a Western medicine model, there was some uncertainty on how much that body of knowledge applied to them since they felt so underrepresented in the studies that contributed to that knowledge. The patients and study participants described were rarely people that came from similar geography, cultures, and lifestyles or had physical characteristics they identified with.