WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With years of corporate experience, volunteer work, healthcare training and medical education development, Alyssa Wostrel brings marketing, organizational and financial leadership along with passion for Integrative and Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) to her new role as Executive Director of Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium (IHPC), the leading organization for advancement of integrative healthcare in the United States.
Over 40% of Americans use some form of CAM each year, typically in addition to conventional care. Yet despite the high usage, patients are mostly on their own when it comes to integrating conventional and natural medicine systems and therapies. IHPC envisions a healthcare and offers more choice about how to maintain optimal health and how to deal with illness if it arises by having access to the best of all regulated approaches and professionals.
Wostrel has an MBA from Fordham University and more than a decade of experience in marketing and organizational leadership positions within the natural products industry, including one of the leaders in homeopathic pharmaceutical manufacturing, Heel Inc. Her work included creating and expanding educational programs for medical professionals in all licensed CAM disciplines. As founder of 1M Integrative Solutions, Wostrel provides an array of consulting services to the natural products industry (botanical, nutraceutical, and homeopathic companies), primarily for strategic marketing and regulatory projects. She is skilled in development and fundraising, including as Chair of the fundraising committee for the American Medical College of Homeopathy, where she focused on cause-related marketing at both the community and national level. She remains actively involved as a Board member.
“My for-profit career offered rewarding work, but I also wanted a deeper purpose. So, I’m excited to bring more visibility and awareness to IHPC’s groundbreaking accomplishments in the legislative arena of integrative healthcare.” Len Wisneski, M.D., Chair of the IHPC Board of Directors, shares Ms. Wostrel’s commitment to integrative healthcare. “We want to reach out to more constituencies in natural healthcare at the same time as we build more connections to conventional practitioners. Integrative healthcare is what Americans want and licensed healthcare providers should collaborate in the best interests of our patients.” Dr. Wisneski points to healthcare reform as the current best opportunity to advance an integrative approach to patient care. The specific rules and protocols written over the next three years are important in actual implementation of integrative healthcare and non – discriminatory access to all types of regulated CAM professions into the Affordable Care Act.
Wostrel was Director of Sales and Marketing at Heel Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Heel, a global company with annual revenues of $250 million, before she started her consulting company. She is a Global Impact Fellow with Unite for Sight and travels internationally to do volunteer work with Homeopaths without Borders. Though not a clinical practitioner, Ms. Wostrel has a Diploma of the Institute of Homeopathy from the British Institute of Homeopathy. Her BSBA degree is from the University of Denver. Alyssa lives in Venice, CA and enjoys yoga, bike-riding and family time with her husband, two children and their miniature-dachshund.
Wostrel succeeds former IHPC Executive Director, Janet R Kahn, Ph.D. Dr. Kahn remains involved as IHPC’s Senior Associate as she also accomplishes her duties on the Federal Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health, an appointment announced by President Barack Obama. This group assists an inter-agency council composed of the heads of 17 Federal agencies and chaired by Surgeon General Regina Benjamin.
IHPC was founded in 2001 at the request of legislators who needed an organization representing the consensus voice of the integrative healthcare communities. IHPC and our Partners for Health represent more than 250,000 licensed integrative healthcare providers including medical doctors, naturopathic physicians, acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists, professional midwives, and homeopathic practitioners. This broad coalition of clinicians, patients, healthcare educators and organizations is committed to a healthcare system that is prevention-oriented, promotes health, is cost-effective and ensures all Americans access to the full range of safe and regulated conventional, complementary, and alternative healthcare professionals and therapies.