(Sacramento, Calif.) ---  Natural health advocates across California chalked up another victory late last week, as legislation to expand statewide access to naturopathic medicine was passed for the first time by the California Senate.  The bill, which would extend state licensure to clinically trained naturopathic doctors in California, has now advanced to the State Assembly.

The bill, SB 907, was introduced earlier this year by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).  “California is a leader in the emerging natural healthcare field,” Senator Burton said upon introduction of the measure.  “To continue prohibiting Californians from seeing qualified providers of natural healthcare and receiving the benefit of the services they provide just doesn’t make sense,” he continued.  “Consumers deserve a range of quality healthcare options, and this bill helps make that happen.”

With Senate approval clinched, the bill will begin working its way through the Assembly.  Assemblymember Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), who chairs the Business and Professions Committee, presided over an informational hearing on naturopathic medicine last fall. “Naturopathic medicine may offer valuable health care options for identifying ways to diagnose and treat diseases with an emphasis on health promotion,” stated Correa.  “The naturopathic approach could very well reduce the need for recurrent and expensive medical interventions by maximizing the body’s intrinsic capacity for self-healing and repair.”

Naturopathic medicine is a healing-oriented approach to healthcare that focuses on science-based lifestyle, nutritional, and botanical therapies.  The four years of naturopathic medical education include basic medical sciences, such as anatomy, biochemistry, and pathophysiology, as well as the study and application of natural therapies, such as clinical nutrition, botanical medicine, homeopathy, physical medicine, and health counseling.  The naturopathic approach is dedicated to health promotion and disease prevention, using the best of what both conventional and alternative medicine have to offer.

The bill is sponsored by the California Association of Naturopathic Physicians, which has launched a grassroots advocacy campaign to promote the bill and fight for its passage.  For more information on the campaign, or to enlist in the CANP’s efforts to bring natural medicine to California, visit the campaign’s website at www.NaturalMedicineNow.org.

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