JOSEPH M. HELMS, M.D.
		DR. JOSEPH HELMS is considered to be the Father of Medical Acupuncture in the United States. He has taught physicians since 1978 when he coined the term “medical acupuncture” for his first workshop. In 1980 he created the “Medical Acupuncture for Physicians” program for the Office of Continuing Medical Education at the UCLA School of Medicine, and he has chaired the program since. 5,000 physicians have completed this rigorous training and over eighty percent of them use acupuncture regularly in their practices.

Dr. Helms is the author of the most widely used professional textbook on medical acupuncture, Acupuncture Energetics: A Clinical Approach for Physicians (Medical Acupuncture Publishers, Berkeley, 1995). He also undertook and published the first rigorously designed, controlled research study in medical acupuncture in the U.S. (“Acupuncture for the Management of Primary Dysmenorrhea,” Obstetrics and Gynecology, 69, 51-56, 1987), and thereby established the gold standard for clinical research and publication in acupuncture. His latest book is Getting To Know You: A Physician Explains How Acupuncture Helps You Be The Best YOU (Medical Acupuncture Publishers, Berkeley, 1995).

Dr. Helms is founding president of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, the national professional society that has established training and practice standards for medical acupuncture. He served as consultant on the World Health Organization’s acupuncture scientific advisory committees that have established international training and practice standards. He was instrumental in organizing the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, and designing the NIH Consensus Development Conference on Acupuncture in 1997. He was a participant in the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy in 2001. With his teaching colleagues, Dr. Helms created the Helms Medical Institute in 1999 to train and certify the clinical faculty involved.