Kemper - Holistic pediatrician, twentieth anniversary revised edition - a pediatrici

D R . K ATHI J. K EMPER is the founding director of the Center for Integrative Health and Wellness at Ohio State University. She was recruited from Wake Forest University, where she held the Caryl J. Guth Chair for Complementary and Integrative Medicine and served as the founding director of the Center for Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Kemper was also the founding director of the Center for Holistic Pediatric Education and Research at Boston Childrens Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kemper is past president of the Academic Pediatric Association and founder of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Integrative Medicine. She is recognized internationally as the leading authority on complementary therapies for children and is frequently consulted by media, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, ABC News, Wall Street Journal, Readers Digest, Redbook, First for Women, and USA Today .

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To Daniel Alexander Kemper

C ONTENTS

A NDREW W EIL , M.D.

I t is my pleasure to write this Foreword for the twentieth anniversary edition of The Holistic Pediatrician . This newest edition marks a milestone in pediatric integrative medicine, a further indication of much progress in the field. As befits the changes weve seen over time, this edition contains new chapters on Anxiety, Autism, Fatigue, and Painconditions that have become all too common not just in adults, but in children and youth in twenty-first-century America.

So much has changed in twenty years. Back in the 1990s, when we began the physician fellowship training program at the University of Arizona and Dr. Kemper started writing the first edition of this book, pediatricians were still worried about chickenpox (now theres a vaccine, and rates have dropped over 90 percent), and email was a novelty. Google, WebMD, and Facebook did not exist. Physicians rarely learned much about nutrition or the importance of the environment to childrens health. Parents who used therapies like herbs, meditation, and massage were considered eccentric. Instead of the prevailing dichotomy of conventional vs. alternative, Dr. Kemper promoted a synthesis or integration of therapies based on scientific evidence.

When The Holistic Pediatrician first appeared, it was heartily embraced, not only by parents, but also by physicians eager to fill the gaps in their education. Within two years of its publication, Dr. Kemper was recruited to my alma mater, Harvard Medical School, to found the first Center for Holistic Pediatrics in the United States. While at Harvard, Dr. Kemper developed the first pediatric training programs to help faculty physicians learn an integrative approach to health care. She and her team, the Longwood Herbal Task Force, created the first online interprofessional training program to enable health professionals to respond to families questions about herbs and dietary supplements. She also founded the Academic Pediatric Associations Special Interest Group on Holistic and Complementary (now Integrative) Pediatrics to help innovators across the country learn from one another how to incorporate alternative care into academic settings that insist on the highest standards of evidence. These were the two most frequent questions colleagues asked: Does it work? and Is it safe?

As evidence grew that integrative approaches are indeed effective and safe, both families and pediatricians demanded more evidence-based, reliable information. In 2005, Dr. Kemper founded the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Integrative Medicine. In 2010, the Academy published her second book, Mental Health Naturally , to address Americas growing health crisis with an integrative, comprehensive approach to promoting mental/emotional well-being. The same year, in response to a parents request, she wrote a concise, practical summary for parents of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Addressing ADD Naturally .

Over the past decade, Dr. Kemper has not only pioneered the field of integrative pediatrics, she has also created two more integrative medicine centers at academic institutionsWake Forest University Health Sciences in North Carolina and The Ohio State University. As the demand for integrative services expands, for adults as well as children, the main questions her colleagues now ask are not about safety and effectiveness but about how rapidly services can be delivered to patients who need them, and how they can be paid for.

This is where we need your help. I urge you to keep a copy of this book on your shelf for your own familys reference. In it, you will find reliable, practical advice and comfort for common childhood problems. Second, please encourage your physician to read it and refer to it. Thousands of pediatricians have already read, learned from, and changed their practices because of this book. Thats a start. But in order for health care to truly change, your advocacy is needed to ensure that insurance plans cover integrative servicesregistered dietitians, acupuncturists, certified health coaches, and massage therapistsjust as they do for physicians, chiropractors, psychologists, and physical therapists. Continue to work in your community and region to promote clean air (smoke free zones) and water and sustainable agriculture, energy, and transportation. And always keep in mind that childrens healthy habits and habitats depend on the choices and actions of wise and loving adults.

T hanks to the many parents and pediatric clinicians who provided constructive feedback and requests for more information in response to the first two editions. Thanks to visionary colleagues in the American Academy of Pediatrics who lead efforts to create our first truly integrative medical specialtypediatrics! Thanks to many friends from the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health and the Academy for Integrative Health and Medicine for organizing efforts to build collaborations that are helping to transform health care. Thanks to the many researchers worldwide who have done the hard work that makes it possible for us to provide evidence-informed care. Thanks to those who have gone before us and worked beside us to create a more humanistic health care that values clinicians as well as patient wellness. Thanks to those working to advocate for healthier habitats and policies that affect health through the environment, agriculture, transportation, education, housing, and justice. Thanks to the editing team at Harper Collins who has believed in this project for over 20 years. Deep gratitude goes to my friend and colleague, Andy Weil, for writing the Foreword and for being a gracious role model for many years. And most of all, thanks to Daniel, who has grown up as the son of the Holistic Pediatrician, and who makes her proud and grateful every day. You are my joy.