NASH MEMBER UPDATE - May 2007

The North American Society of Homeopaths is dedicated to promote, represent and serve as the voice of all professional homeopaths in North America. NASH aims to develop and uphold the highest level of excellence in homeopathic practice while enhancing the role of the homeopathic profession as an integral part of health care delivery.

Board of Directors

President: Manfred Mueller, CA,
Email: homeopathicassociates@earthlink.net

Vice president: Kate Birch, MN,
Email:  Katebhom@yahoo.com

Treasurer: Julie Mann, CA,
Email:  ma13nn@aol.com

Registrar: Laura Sholtz, ME,
Email:  laurasremedies@hotmail.com

Secretary: Carleen Johnson, ME,
Email:  cjohnson@uninets.net

Canadian Representative: Basil Ziv, Ont.,
Email:  basilziv@rogers.com

Administrator: Liz Bonfig, FL,
Email:  nashinfo@aol.com, 954-749-9943

Annual Meeting/Joint Conference

This years conference was held in sunny (but cool) Colorado. It was attended well by local homeopaths. The NCH reports the overall conference reviews rated this conference at a 4.59/5 rating. However, the overall conference attendance was down with just over 200 attendees this year. This is a disappointment not only for the NCH but also for NASH. Less than 30 NASH members registered to attend the conference. NASH’s annual meeting, which was intended to be a working meeting, was attended by only three members and became more of a casual discussion rather than an official meeting. Part of the intention of holding a joint annual conference rather than each organization holding their own independent conference was to bring the number of attendees up and to have an opportunity where many different sectors of the homeopathic community were represented.

In order to address our member’s needs, we have sent out a survey and Liz is busy collating all your responses. Keep in mind that it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy and commitment to present a conference. We will be looking at our members’ responses to determine how we can draw more people to future conferences.

The contributing member organizations (NCH, AIH, HANP, HNA and NASH) also discussed the problem of low attendance and will be working to address this for future conferences. One of the ways suggested to increase attendance was to have schools pay for their students to attend and that the weekend of the conference could substitute for a school weekend. Students would then have an opportunity to meet other students from around the country as well as get acquainted with the homeopathic community. There was also mention in the evaluations that more people would like to see some of our seasoned practitioners there. The question is how can we have a conference track that will satisfy both levels of practitioners? If you are a school director please consider registering your student for next year’s conference as a part of their annual tuition.

We believe that a joint annual conference provides a unique opportunity for all facets of the homeopathic community to come together and share ideas. Not only is there occasion to teach but also to study under our professional colleagues. This opportunity for networking also provides the needed fuel to propel homeopathy into the public eye. Rather than each organization competing with each other over a small pool of homeopaths, our combined efforts have the potential to create something really great.

To these ends, we wish to encourage everyone to mark their calendars for the 2008 conference to be held in Warwick, Rhode Island April 11-15. As the hotel is already booked, a change in venue is not possible for this next year. With our sights on 2009, we encourage your input.

NASH is also considering holding a conference in Canada and is looking for input and volunteers to coordinate this event.

NCH Announcement

NASH wishes to extend its congratulations to NCH’s new president, NASH member Nancy Gahles. Among Nancy’s varied credentials, she has been an RSHom (NA) since 2001. Former NCH president and NASH member Jean Hoagland has been elected treasurer. We wish them the best!

Other Conference News

Saturday evening’s salsa dance workshop was terrific fun. Many thanks to Kate Birch, Amy Lansky, Robin Logan, the Council for Homeopathic Certification and Washington Homeopathic Products for their donation to our raffle.

We have purchased for our lending library the weekend conference CD collection. Please check the website for details.

Elections

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! A nomination committee must be convened immediately to create the roster for this year’s elections. According to the By-laws, a nomination committee of the president and three members at large will create the roster for the vote.

The elections this year are for the term beginning January 2008. The following positions will be open:

President
Vice President
Secretary

If you were looking for an opportunity to get yourself more involved with the development of the homeopathic profession, now is your time to step forward to be nominated to the ballot. Working on the NASH board gives you an opportunity to make a difference. There are many ideas, but making them a reality is the goal of the board members.

As a membership organization whose existence is defined by the workings of its volunteer board members, it is important for our members to realize that we are in this together and that we need to share the responsibility of continuing on with our work. Having elections every three years facilitates the sharing of responsibility. We strongly encourage long time NASH registered members to offer their ability to help carry the torch.

NASH presentation to HPRAC Bill 171 - Canada

As you are aware, NASH made a presentation to HPRAC on April 23rd regarding governmental regulation of homeopaths under the naturopathic college. We will keep you posted on the response. Thank you to those members who have supported our work in Canada.

Over the years, NASH has had greater or lesser involvement in Canada, with or without a Canadian representative. Many thanks go to Basil for his dedication to representing the voice of the Canadian homeopaths. We look forward to helping bring greater unity in the multiple factions of homeopaths that work throughout Canada.

Journal

The American Homeopath, Volume 13 is underway. We are pleased to announce Richa Eland, RSHom (NA) as our new journal editor. Thank you, Richa. She will be working with several NASH volunteers to create this year’s journal. Thank you for their participation. We look forward to seeing the journal in hand later this year.

If you have an article to submit, please contact Richa at nashjournal@msn.com as soon as possible to meet the deadline. If you have some time to help Liz with ad sales, please email her at nashinfo@aol.com.

Our past editor, Melanie Grimes, has taken a paid editorial position with Simillimum, the journal for HANP. The NASH board is very grateful for the years of service Melanie has dedicated to the production of the journal. In honor of her services, her membership fees have been waived for this year and a lovely pen was gifted as a token of gratitude. We wish her well with her new ventures and hope to make the NASH journal production a profitable venture so that we can work on paying our editors.

Membership News

NASH welcomes back the following registered members:
David Johnson, WI
Tanya Kell, TN

We are also pleased to welcome these new members:
Registered Members
Carole Krones, TN
Staria Manos, CA
Laura Burr, MN
Students
Caitlyn Johnson, MN
Anne Marshall, VA
Bonnie Phelps, AZ

Defense Fund

The Florida Health Freedom group requested funds to help them reintroduce a bill in Florida. The board approved $250 from the defense fund to support Florida’s efforts.

If you are involved in legislative activities in your state or province, please apply to NASH for funding.

PR Contribution

In anticipation of a public relations campaign launched by Dana Ullman's new book -- The Homeopathic Revolution: Famous People and Cultural Heroes Who Chose Homeopathy, which chronicles the use of homeopathy through the ages by the wealthy, famous and elite, a fundraising initiative has been started to help get the buzz going about homeopathy. This PR campaign will seek to promote homeopathy and leading homeopathic organizations and will not simply promote this book, though this book will be a useful tool to help tell homeopathy's story in a convincing fashion. We were introduced to Dana's objectives at the conference. Anna Cox is stepping in as a promotional manager and set a challenge to the homeopathic community to raise funds for this worthy cause. For the advancement of homeopathy, the NASH board has voted to donate $250 from the promotional budget to the PR campaign. We encourage our members to visit the website at http://www.homeopathicrevolution.com for more information and consider donating to the campaign. This might be something that state or provincial associations can donate to on behalf of their members, ensuring representation from around the continent.

Homeopathic Survey

The American Medical College of Homeopathy, Department of Research has launched another national survey, this time the focus is on homeopathic patients. The survey is available on-line at http://surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=902693334313 from May 1 – October1, 2007. There is a letter available for practitioners to give their patients to encourage survey participation. Please let us know if you would like to receive the letter.

Results of the previous survey done by the American Medical College of Homeopathy are available @ www.AMCofH.org or http://www.AMCofH.org/Students/Research.html.

National Health Freedom Conference

The 5th Annual "Health Freedom Conference for Leaders and Advocates” has been scheduled for October 12-14, 2007 at the William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The conference will feature Keynote Speaker Clinton Miller, a leading activist in the health freedom movement. For more information, visit their website at http://www.nationalhealthfreedom.org or call 651- 688-6515. ion of our profession. We regret that John did not contact us before writing his article.

World Health Awareness Organization

Dear WHAO members

I am sending you this email message to inform you that the following three have handed in their resignation to the WHAO board:

- Amina Sabry, WHAO Chair woman, resignation effective from 1 May 2007.
- Gabrielle Traub, WHAO Registrar and Board member, resignation effective from 1 May 2007.
- Cindy Chrisman, WHAO Website Director, resignation effective from 15 May 2007.

All three have chosen to hand in their resignation for personal reasons. I would like to take the oportunity to first of all thank Gabrielle Traub for founding WHAW and for her tremendous involvement and dedication to WHAW over the past years. Secondly, I would like to thank Amina Sabry for taking over after Gabrielle Traub and doing an excellent job as Chair of WHAO. Thirdly, I would like to thank Cindy Chrisman for setting up the new WHAO website. All three have voluntarily contributed and shared their precious time with us. I am sorry that they will be leaving.

According to the bylaws (section 6.02), in the interests of continuity of policy and direction, I will during this interim period take over the post of WHAO Chair person, and WHAO Secretary Tariq Khan will take over as WHAO Vice Chair.

According to the bylaws (section 5.05) the Chair person is to be elected on even numbers (2008, 2010, etc). This means that the WHAO Chair person will be elected for one year. The Registrar and the Website director will both be elected for two years. Moreover, according to the bylaws (section 5.05) the WHAO Vice Chair is also to be elected on odd numbers (2007, 2009, etc).

This is therefore a call for nominations for the posts of Chair person (1 year), Vice Chair person (2 years), Registrar (2 years) and Website director (2 years).

Nominations may be handed in until 5 June. According to the WHAO bylaws (section 5.03), 30 days will be allowed for Members to vote. In order to ensure transparency the bylaws state that your votes are supposed to be sent to the Chair homeopat@email.com and Vice Chair drtariqkhan2000@yahoo.com

Yours sincerely,
Petter Viksveen
Interim WHAO Chairman
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Petter Viksveen, Registered Homeopath MNHL,
ECCH Chairman, WHAO Vice Chairman
Nordbogaten 10, 4006 Stavanger, Norway
Tel: + 47 51 89 25 00
E-mail: homeopat@email.com
ECCH: www.homeopathy-ecch.eu
WHAO: www.worldhomeopathy.org