July 31, 2018
As one of the leading medical associations in California, CSOMA is committed to supporting the acupuncture profession through public policy work, networking, continuing education, publishing, and community outreach.
For more than 30 years, CSOMA and its members have served as a consistent voice of the profession. During that same time, dozens of different associations, many of which are language-specific to their particular constituency, have been created in an effort to support the scale and diversity of the acupuncture profession in California.
Earlier this year, State Representative Evan Low, of Assembly District 28, and his team organized several stakeholder meetings to encourage the formation of a single statewide acupuncture association through the unification of the 25+ acupuncture associations that currently operate within the state of California. As of May 2018, a Steering Committee charged with leading this unification effort was organized and it was decided that the name for the new association would be the California Acupuncture & Traditional Medicine Association (CalATMA). CSOMA attended the initial meetings of the steering committee.
CalATMA is in the initial stages of becoming an organization and currently has no member benefits for you. In order to participate on the steering committee, CALATMA required that CSOMA dissolve and close its corporation and disband its membership. Because we value your membership and commitment to CSOMA, we will continue to support you and the profession by following our stated strategic plan.
There is still uncertainty regarding if and how some of the individual associations will merge into one association, and if the new associations’ prevailing mission and values will be in alignment with CSOMA’s mission, or how long this process will take to accomplish. After much thought and deliberation, our Board of Directors at CSOMA made the unanimous decision to respectfully resign from our seat on the steering committee.
We believe that our resources are best spent continuing to advocate on behalf of our membership, and we are committed to keeping the tremendous momentum going that our organization has reignited over the past couple of years. CSOMA is currently working on numerous state and national legislative priorities as well as providing continuing education opportunities for our membership.
At CSOMA, we recognize the importance of and need for consensus among the state associations in order to achieve common goals and objectives for the profession on a state and national level. We are committed to professional communication, working together on statewide legislative priorities and joint lobbying efforts.
We hope to have the opportunity to collaborate with CalATMA in the near future, and we would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Representative Evan Low and his team for bringing the various statewide stakeholders to the table in the spirit of unification.
If you have further questions or concerns or would like more information regarding this decision, please feel free to contact CSOMA President Tiffany Tuftee at president@csomaonline.org.
We thank you for your loyalty to our association over the last 30 years and look forward to continue to represent your best interests and advance the acupuncture profession.
Sincerely,
CSOMA Board of Directors