Over the years, chiropractors have bemoaned the lack of a national chiropractic marketing campaign, not one led by one of the national associations, but by the profession.
That reality was realized when the American Chiropractic Association (ACA), the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) and the Association of Chiropractic Colleges (ACC) agreed to form the Alliance for Chiropractic Progress in 1997.
The Alliance members agreed that too many people were unaware of the qualifications of doctors of chiropractic and set a first-year goal of "raising the credibility of the profession and positioning chiropractors as highly qualified health care providers."
By the end of 1997, the Alliance had amassed a $800,000 budget for 1998. The time had arrived to test the viability of a national chiropractic marketing campaign. The vehicles chosen to accomplish the task were three popular magazines:
Prevention -- The number-one health magazine in the United States, ranked 12th among all magazines, with a circulation of over 2.1 million.
Consumer Digest -- This publication has a national circulation of 1.2 million with a health/fitness feature in every issue (not to be confused with Consumer Reports).
Health -- With a national circulation of over one million, Health has won numerous awards including "Best Consumer Magazine."
Before the media campaign began, Prevention's research department surveyed their readers to determine the level of credibility held by their readers for chiropractic:
Prevention:
1) Full-page color ads in the March, April, May, June, July, August, September and October issues.
Health:
1) Full-page color ads in the April, May, June, September and October issues.
Overall, the campaign scored over 61 million impressions in a target market of people most likely to respond to chiropractic. When Prevention surveyed their readers after the campaign, the responses showed gains in all areas. More people now know the educational level of DCs; what it takes for a DC to open a chiropractic practice; and that DCs don't use drugs or surgery.
The important question when the 1998 marketing program began was: "Can a chiropractic advertising campaign affect the way people think about chiropractic?" After eight months of consistent effort, the answer is an unqualified "yes."
The members of the Alliance are now meeting to plan the 1999 chiropractic marketing campaign. Among the topics under discussion are:
Many relevant diagnostic signs are not performed deliberately by the examiner or by the patient at the examiner’s direction. They are observed as the patient reacts to their condition. Fortin’s finger sign, Minor’s sign, and Vanzetti’s sign are three examples of this principle.
Spearheaded by burgeoning scientific and clinical research literature, psychedelics have reached a level of media coverage and popular interest that has not been seen for over half a century. By “psychedelics,” we are referring to the unique class of substances that includes psilocybin (the active compound found in so-called “magic mushrooms”), LSD, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ayahuasca, 5-MeO-DMT, and mescaline – each of which occurs in the natural world (except for LSD, which is a semi-synthetic compound).
While working at the Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, N.M., one of the primary care physicians stated that imaging every patient prior to receiving chiropractic was not medically necessary. It was at that point I reconsidered the need for the imaging of every patient to avoid malpractice.
