Breaking News: John Weeks accepts leadership award at IHSNY20

Photo Cred: Evan Wise/Unsplash

By Katherine Shagoury

John Weeks, editor-in-chief of The Integrator Blog, accepted the leadership award this afternoon at the 2020 Integrative Healthcare Symposium in New York City.

The Leadership Award, presented annually at the Integrative Healthcare Symposium, recognizes a pioneer whose contributions have shaped integrative healthcare and paved the way for other practitioners. Notable past recipients include David Perlmutter, MD, FACN, ABIHM, Joseph Pizzorno, ND, Mark Hyman, MD, and Mehmet Oz, MD.

Weeks’ work prior to engagement with the field in 1983 was in journalism, politics, and community organizing. He began with a decade of intensive work in the re-vitalization of the naturopathic profession before opening into the emerging integrative space. His leadership-oriented Integrator Blog has chronicled and cajoled via perspectives informed by experience with many of the field’s stakeholders, including professional associations, hospitals, insurers, and researchers.

Weeks helped found the Integrative Health Policy Consortium, the Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health, and the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine. His present volunteerism includes roles with Integrative Medicine for the underserved and a new institute under development at Morehouse University.

Since 2016, Weeks has served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine where he has partnered with top academic researchers for special issues in key subjects such as whole systems research, group-delivered services, integrative palliative care, naturopathy, and implementation science. Weeks attended Stanford University for three years, studying art history and writing poetry. Four institutions have granted him honorary doctorates.

Weeks also led a plenary session, Hope is a Verb: 50 Years in the Furrows for Integrative Health and Medicine.

“It’s great to be acknowledged through this organization,” said Weeks. “I’m working on taking it all in.”