The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) has been around since the ‘50s, and its 68,000 members have a reputation for progressive, activist work in the medical community.  For instance, in 2007 AMSA set four strategic priorities:

•    Quality, affordable healthcare for all
•    Global health equity
•    Enriching medicine through diversity
•    Professional integrity, development, and student well being
    
    In addition, AMSA’s humanistic medicine interest group has long been a voice of advocacy for CAM therapies and cooperation between conventional and CAM practitioners.  In 2005, interest in naturopathic medicine grew so strong within the group that they added a naturopathic medicine interest group.

    I, along with about a dozen other ND students, a handful of pre-meds, and about 15,000 MD and DO students, attended the national convention this March.  We heard lectures from some of the most influential and experienced voices of effective compassion in medicine, and attended workshops on interesting and relevant topics like Street Medicine, Gender Variant Children, and the Activist Medicine at Large Protests.

The most interesting part of the conference for me was my conversations with conventional medical students about the naturopathic profession and what our training, history, and scope of practice are like.  The epitome of these conversations was on the floor of the House of Delegates, during debate over two bills regarding ND students.  The first bill would have re-defined medical students in the AMSA bylaws to include ND students.  It did not pass.  The second bill, which did pass, was a backup plan: it allows naturopathic medical student to serve on AMSA’s interest groups and action committees, the heart and soul of AMSA.

Because the second bill passed, three naturopathic medical students were elected to serve in those roles.  Two naturopathic students are interest group coordinators and one student is serving on the community and environmental health leadership, a role which includes being flown to AMSA’s home base in Washington DC a few times over the next year.

The debate on the house floor over these two bills was incredible.  Each chapter gets one vote, and many of the chapters spent hours discussing these bills among themselves--many were unable to reach consensus about the bills involving naturopathic medicine.  Before that time, many of these students had never even heard of naturopathic doctors.

I was highly intrigued by the nay votes, and the reasons behind them.  One of the biggest reasons I heard was that NDs practice medicine that is not evidence based.  At the naturopathic medicine mixer that night, there was a lot of talk among ND and interested MD/DO students about what evidence-based medicine is, and how it is harnessed by various physicians.  We had a hard time even agreeing among ourselves!

The new AMSA Naturopathic Medicine Interest group is quickly gaining momentum.  More discussion around evidence-based medicine is one of my main priorities during my tenure as coordinator, and I have started to plan an essay contest to spark discussion.  A free seminar for Oregon Health Science University medical students, (Portland, OR) about naturopathic medicine and how MDs and NDs can work together is being developed.  In addition, I received my acceptance to AMSA’s ‘T4 Institute: Training Tomorrow’s Teacher’s Today’ with the aforementioned teaching topic as my official project for the 5-day retreat.

I’m really excited about my new role in AMSA and the opportunities I’m already finding as a result of my AMSA membership.  I encourage anyone who has questions or comments about AMSA or how MDs and NDs can work together to email me at the address below.  I also highly encourage any and every ND student to join AMSA now.  An affiliate membership for naturopathic medical students is $35 a year, and allows you to participate in any of the list-serves, go to Institutes and Electives, and attend the regional and national conferences.  The 2010 national conference in Anaheim, CA should be as exciting as this year’s, and I hope to see a lot of new faces at the naturopathic medicine mixer.

Mark G Davis
National College of Natural Medicine
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