Report
Measuring What Matters, Scaling What Works: Reflections from the 2026 International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health
by Alina Schleinzer1,2, Jeremy Y. Ng1,2,3,4, Mirela-Ioana Bilc1,2, Dennis Anheyer1,2, Lisa Mörchen 1,2, and Holger Cramer1,2
¹Institute of General Practice and Interprofessional Care, University Hospital Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
² Robert Bosch Center for Integrative Medicine and Health, Bosch Health Campus, Stuttgart, Germany
³ Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada
⁴School of Public Health, Faculty of Health, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Cite as: Schleinzer et. al., (2026). Measuring What Matters, Scaling What Works: Reflections from the 2026 International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health, THE MIND Bulletin on Mind-Body Medicine Research, 10(2), 8-13. https://10.61936/themind/202603133
Abstract
The International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health is the annual meeting of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health (ACIMH) and serves as a central forum for research, education, clinical practice, and health system development in integrative medicine. In 2026, the congress took place in Salt Lake City under the theme “Revolutionizing Health Care: Measuring What Matters, Scaling What Works” and also served as the 21st International Congress on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine Research (ICCMR) of the International Society for Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine Research (ISCMR). With more than 700 participants, the meeting brought together an international community of researchers, clinicians, educators, and stakeholders in traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine.
Overall, the congress offered a vivid impression of where international TCIM is heading: beyond individual interventions and toward measurable impact, sustainable implementation, and a broader understanding of health. Across plenary lectures, symposia, oral presentations, posters, workshops, and artistic formats, the program emphasized Whole Health, patient-centered outcomes, evidence synthesis, responsible use of artificial intelligence, and the translation of research into scalable models of care. For the German traditional, complementary and integrative medicine community, the meeting also highlighted the growing relevance of academic consortia and international collaboration, including the emerging role of the German Academic Consortium for Traditional & Integrative Medicine and Health (ACoNIG) as a bridge between German institutions and established international networks.
Keywords: Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine; Whole Health; Congress Report; Evidence Synthesis; Artificial Intelligence; International Collaboration.
Report
From 20 to 23 April 2026, the International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health (https://imconsortium.org/page/2026-international-congress) took place in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Organized by the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health (ACIMH), the congress also served as the 21st International Congress on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine Research (ICCMR) of the International Society lace in Salt Lake City under the theme “Revolutionizing Health Care: Measuring What Matters, Scaling What Works” and also served as the 21st International Congress on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine Research (ICCMR) of the International Society for Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine Research (ISCMR). As such, the meeting brought together two leading international organizations in the field of traditional, integrative, and complementary medicine (TCIM) and provided a central forum for researchers, clinicians, educators and health system stakeholders working in TCIM. This year, more than 700 participants attended the congress, including six researchers (Holger Cramer, Dennis Anheyer, Jeremy Y. Ng, Mirela-Ioana Bilc, Alina Schleinzer, and Lisa Mörchen) from the Chair of Research in Complementary Medicine at the University Hospital Tübingen, who contributed to several parts of the scientific program. The conference also reflected the growing importance of academic consortia in this field—a development that is reflected in Germany by ACoNIG, the recently established German Academic Consortium for Traditional & Integrative Medicine and Health (spokespersons: Holger Cramer and Tobias Esch), which is organizationally anchored at the Tübingen Chair and maintains close ties with ACIMH from the beginning.
The congress theme, “Revolutionizing Health Care: Measuring What Matters, Scaling What Works,” set a clear direction. The focus was not only on whether TCIM can contribute to health care, but on how effective, patient-centered and whole-person approaches can be meaningfully measured, implemented and scaled within health systems. In this sense, the congress reflected a broader international development: TCIM is increasingly being discussed not merely as a collection of individual therapies, but as a contribution to Whole Health, health care quality and system transformation.
This orientation was particularly evident in the plenary sessions. Judith T. Moskowitz from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine showed how programs designed to promote positive emotions can be scaled and integrated into care. Benjamin Kligler from the Veterans Health Administration described the implementation of a Whole Health approach within the US veterans’ health care system. Ronald M. Epstein from the University of Rochester Medical Center highlighted the importance of presence, attention and genuine listening in the clinical encounter.
Other plenary contributions addressed the implementation of new care models for chronic pain, the role of lifestyle medicine,
the importance of relationships and cultural sensitivity in medical education, and the question of which health indicators truly matter and how they can be measured in meaningful ways. Taken together, the plenaries made clear how strongly the field of TCIM is moving toward implementation, measurable impact and health system change.
In addition to the plenary sessions, the congress included 44 symposia, two of which were organized by the Tübingen group. The symposium “Art of Prompts: Unlocking AI’s Potential in Education, Practice and Research” led by Jeremy Y. Ng focused on the role of generative artificial intelligence in TCIM. After a brief scientific update, participants worked in small groups on concrete use cases. Prompt engineering was presented not as a purely technical skill, but as an emerging competence for using AI in research, education and clinical practice in a precise, critical and responsible way.
The second Tübingen symposium, “Challenges and Opportunities in Evidence Synthesis for Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine (TCIM)” led by Dennis Anheyer and L. Susan Wieland from Cochrane Complementary Medicine, addressed the quality and communication of scientific evidence. Topics included the limitations of case reports, methodological challenges in network meta-analyses, bias in patient-reported outcomes, and the transparent handling of uncertainty using GRADE. At the center of the discussion was the question of how evidence in TCIM can be communicated more clearly, more robustly and in a way that is useful for practice.
The Tübingen group was also represented in the Oral Abstract Sessions, including an international study on the perception of generative AI in research and as chair of a session on mind-body research by Jeremy Y. Ng. The poster sessions, held over two days, provided a lively setting for direct scientific exchange. A total of 221 posters were presented, with the Tübingen group contributing nine posters. One poster by Alina Schleinzer from the Chair of Complementary Medicine at Tübingen University Hospital received an Honorable Mention in the Dr. George Lewith Poster Competition for early-career researchers of ISCMR. The scientific program was complemented by 27 workshops, ranging from yoga and line dance to autogenic training and nature walks. These sessions added practical and embodied elements to the congress and illustrated that TCIM is concerned not only with research, care models and measurement, but also with lived experience, mindfulness and human connection. The Abstract Supplement for the 2026 International Congress, including all oral and poster presentations, has now been released and is available for access at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/27536130261435240.
A special highlight was the art installation “A Hymn to Life” by the artist Zhen-Ru. The installation connected art and mindfulness in a direct and experiential way. Buddhist monks from the Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute Society and Buddhist nuns from the Great Wisdom Buddhist Institute on Prince Edward Island, Canada, shared the vision behind the installation and emphasized how art can offer comfort, orientation and inner insight in a fast-paced and stress-filled world. Visitors were prepared for the experience through mindful introductory exercises and short meditations before being invited to freely explore the two thematic exhibition rooms. This created deliberate moments of pause, stillness and inner connection.
Overall, the congress in Salt Lake City offered a vivid impression of where international TCIM is heading: beyond individual interventions and toward measurable impact, sustainable implementation and a broader understanding of health. Looking ahead, the next ACIMH International Congress on Integrative Medicine & Health will take place in Minneapolis, USA, from 11 to 15 April 2027, while the next ICCMR will be held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from 27 to 30 October 2027, organized by the Dutch Consortium for Integrative Care and Health together with ISCMR.
Author Contributions: Writing—original draft: AS, HC; writing—review and editing: JYN, MIB, DA, LM; All authors have read and agreed to this version of the manuscript.
Funding: AS and LM were supported by the Karl und Veronica Carstens Foundation, Essen, Germany (grant number: KVC 9/122/2021), DA and HC were supported by the Software AG Foundation, Darmstadt, Germany (grant number: P 15938).
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: No data was used in this commentary article.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.[MH1]