Annual Octagon Conference yields new goals for chiropractic’s future

November 12, 2013 — Last month, Life University hosted the fifth annual Octagon Conference on its campus in Marietta, Ga. The Octagon is a think tank dedicated to creating world-changing dialogue on healthcare and the human endeavor.

Attendees came from nine states and two countries and represented industries such as chiropractic, nursing, naturopathy, education, policy development, and futures planning.

The 2013 Octagon Conference explored a report from the Institute for Alternative Futures (IAF) titled “Chiropractic: 2025: Divergent Futures.” The report lists four likely scenarios for what the chiropractic profession will look like in the year 2025. The most optimistic scenario is focused on “Vitalism and Value.”

Vitalism is the recognition and respect that all living organisms are self-developing, self-maintaining, and self-healing. This innate intelligence needs no help, just no interference in order to strive for optimum function. This philosophy is at the heart of chiropractic, and is the scenario which offers the most attractive pathway toward the proliferation of the profession.

It was the goal of the conference to see if this scenario could be “reverse-engineered” in order to achieve the outcome sooner than 2025, while also being realized in a more robust fashion. This yielded a series of short, intermediate and long-term objectives for the assembled group to pursue.

“It was fascinating and remarkably informative to see how disciplines that share a common appreciation for vitalism have expressed those perspectives over time,” said Octagon Director, Gerard W. Clum, DC. “Even more intriguing were the commonalities involved in operationalizing these perspectives across disciplines, this was very much about the ‘why’ of the matter.”

The initial recommendations of the 2013 Octagon Conference will be presented to Life University President Guy Riekeman, DC, and the Board of Trustees for advice and counsel on implementation of the outcomes.

Source: Life University