Dr. Aung is a geriatric and family physician and a traditional Chinese medical (TCM) practitioner and teacher. Since the 1980’s he has provided a blend of Eastern, Western and natural medicine in his medical clinic in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. At the University of Alberta, Dr. Aung is an associate clinical professor in the Departments of Medicine and Family Medicine and adjunct professor in the Faculty of Extension and the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Aung founded the Certificate Program in Medical Acupuncture at the University of Alberta in 1991, and he is the program’s chief instructor, examiner and curriculum consultant.

Dr. James Gordon, MD, a Harvard educated psychiatrist, engineered a series of annual meetings in the 1990’s bringing together oncologists, CAM practitioners, funders and cancer patients. Seeds were sown and relationships grown that have fueled the development of CAM in North America and internationally. He is the Founder and Director of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, a Clinical Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School, and recently served as Chairman of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy.

The initiative and commitment of Dr. Joseph Pizzorno, N.D., inspired the creation of the first comprehensive government-run natural medicine clinic in the United States in 1996. The nonprofit Community Health Centers of King County, was the country’s first fully integrated, publicly funded conventional and natural medicine clinic. Dr. Pizzorno was appointed by President Clinton in 2000 to the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy and by President Bush’s administration to the Medicare Coverage Advisory Committee in 2002.

Marja J. Verhoef, PhD holds the only Canada Research Chair in Complementary Medicine. Dr. Verhoef has studied integrated clinics across Canada. She is one of the founding members of the Island Group, an ambitious cluster of scientists intent on developing a research model that will appropriately evaluate the effects of whole systems such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Naturopathy. She is Co-Chair of the Canadian Interdisciplinary Network for CAM Research, leads the development of a large outcome measures database and was the first President of the International Society of Complementary Medicine Research.