NWHSU Faculty & Staff Shine at 2025 ACC-RAC
The 2025 ACC-RAC Conference took place late March in New Orleans, Louisiana. The theme, “Transformative Trends in Healthcare,” was a perfect fit for NWHSU faculty and staff who presented their work. Michele Maiers, DC, PhD, MPH, Andrea Albertson, DC and Alex Sundin, DC shared their research. Drs. Maiers and Albertson won awards for their contributions.
I think every chiropractor should be engaging in research. Research allows us to test the claims we make, and provides us with insight into how impactful some of the treatment procedures we provide can be,” said Dr. Sundin.
“Research is how we move forward as a profession. It allows us to improve on our abilities to help achieve excellent outcomes with patients.”
Ethical Gen AI in Chiropractic at 2025 ACC-RAC
Dr. Sundin presented a manuscript entitled “Educating the Algorithm: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Modify Contextual Factors in Research and Chiropractic Education.” This is his first manuscript as first author, and it is important both to his career, and the field.
“[This work] provides insights into how Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) can be used in research and chiropractic education as a time and cost efficient application,” he explained.
More importantly it explores the ethical concerns around using text-to-image Gen AI and how the integration of these types of Gen AI models needs to be carefully implemented with many viewpoints represented during image creation as to not reinforce societal biases and stereotypes.”
Growing his research career and presenting at conferences like 2025 ACC-RAC also helps Dr. Sundin as a teacher, and pushes him to grow. “As an early-career clinician-scientist this work means I am able to conduct better studies and allows me to provide better instructional knowledge to my students,” he explained.
“My mentors through this process (Dr. Michele Maiers and Dr. Steven Passmore) have provided invaluable insights and guidance as they have pushed me to grow, even when it was uncomfortable. I look forward to my next project, continuing to explore the area of contextual factors and not only how they affect patient-doctor interactions, but how they affect patient outcomes.”
Public Health and the Chiropractic Workforce
Both Drs. Maiers and Albertson presented research during the session “Public Health and the Chiropractic Workforce. Both presented about the utilization of chiropractic care in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). Dr. Albertson also presented research about chiropractic in a publicly funded healthcare facility in Canada.
I am incredibly proud of this body of work because it highlights a unique setting and sheds light on populations that are frequently overlooked in both research and education,” shared Dr. Albertson.
Dr. Albertson presented “A team mentality”: a mixed methods study of chiropractors working in US Federally Qualified Health Centers. For this work she won the Clinical and Basic Science for Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics (JMPT) award, part of the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners (NBCE) Paper Award Competition. “Increasingly, chiropractors are providing care within multidisciplinary and integrative teams. This study is novel because it describes the professional qualities, skills, and experiences of chiropractors working within FQHCs,” she explained.
Dr. Albertson’s second presentation was titled Utilization of chiropractic services among older adults with spine pain at a publicly funded healthcare facility in Canada: a retrospective study.
“Social activism has always been a passion of mine, and through these studies, I can help shed light on the experiences of populations often overlooked in research, particularly in relation to chiropractic care,” said Dr. Albertson.
Dr. Maiers presented “I won the job lottery”: a qualitative study of motivating factors for chiropractic within Federally Qualified Health Centers, which received an honorable mention in the award competition.
Together, Dr. Maiers and Dr. Albertson also exhibited related work in the poster hall. They exhibited “That sounds like a great problem for the chiropractic department to solve”: the value of chiropractic within Federally Qualified Health Centers.
Dr. Albertson hopes that these studies and opportunities will lead to further research and professional collaboration. This could mean larger studies, community participatory research, and implementation.
Chiropractic and the Whole Health Movement
Dr. Maiers facilitated two workshop sessions, entitled “Chiropractic’s Role in Advancing the Whole Health Movement.” The session dove into opportunities for chiropractors to be part of the paradigm shift (towards whole health) happening in the Veterans Health Administration and other systems. Participants had the opportunity to contribute to a white paper on chiropractic’s role in advancing the whole health movement.
“Both sessions were standing-room-only, so clearly whole health is a topic of interest to the profession,” said Maiers. Discussants explored the ways the philosophy and practice of chiropractic aligns with whole health. They also discussed how the profession might contribute to this paradigm shift as it evolves. “Our goal is to use the great insights that came from participants in the workshop to inform a future white paper.”
Dr. Maiers Celebrated for Contributions to Research
Dr. Maiers received the George P. and Jerome F. McAndrews Memorial Research Fund Award from the NCMIC Foundation for her contribution to chiropractic research and, more recently, work highlighting the role of nonpharmacological treatments (NPT) for opioid avoidance. This includes recommendations for opioid settlement funding which have informed Congressional testimony on the topic, and an opioid settlement toolkit, to support applications prioritizing NPT for pain management.
This award was created by the NCMIC Foundation to celebrate a worthy research recipient. The award acknowledges and celebrates Dr. Maier’s exceptional ability to advance research. Ryan Burdick, DC, a policy consultant to NWHSU, also received a McAndrews award.