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High Jumping the Great Wall
By Randy Heuston

Students take chiropractic to China, come back citizens of the world

When Ossie Carney walks down the streets of ZiGong, China, his 5-foot-10-inch stature towers head and shoulders above most of those crowding the sidewalks. He’s walking tall also because he’s the only African-American, as far as we know, in that city of more than three million Chinese.

Needless to say, Ossie gets attention. And he likes it.

Adults as well as children stare and giggle, some snap photographs, a few inch up to touch his skin, and many try out their English. He says “Ni-Hao,” and they say “Howdy, Stranger.”

More significantly, Ossie stands out because he is one of the first two chiropractic students to participate in Life University’s International Clinic Program in China. This is not a two-week field trip where students adjust hundreds, then go home chatting about their working vacation and the miracles of chiropractic. No, this is a true clinic experience, head and shoulders above what U.S.-based chiropractic education has tried before. When one set of students finishes Life’s 14-week (one full academic quarter) program, another set will take its place in well-established, professionally run clinics in hospital settings, providing not adjust-and-run chiropractic, but true continuity of care to a teeming populace that needs and appreciates it.

Of course, Life University isn’t interested in just getting

chiropractic into foreign lands. It has to be the right kind of chiropractic—subluxation-based care that goes way beyond treating symptoms. That’s exactly the kind students are learning and applying in China.

Life has established its innovative clinic program now in China and Costa Rica, and invitations to establish clinics and educational programs are being explored in Argentina, Chile, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Israel, Peru, Russia, Spain, Turkey and the Ukraine. Life’s Global Initiatives (LGI), as the umbrella outreach is called, is not only taking chiropractic to the world in unprecedented ways, but, at least equally important, is bringing a “future world” perspective to chiropractic.

This is especially true in China. Near the Great Wall in Beijing signs read: “One World, One Dream,” signaling China’s role as host of the 2008 Olympics. The same slogan fits chiropractic on the international scene.

John Downes, D.C., head of the LGI globe-hopping effort, says: “The clinic and other international initiatives we’re involved with are all driven by our conviction that anything less than global is unacceptable—whether business, education, health care, sports or whatever. This is a new paradigm—not just practicing chiropractic in foreign lands—but an entire new perspective on the world. Life University is now fully operational in this paradigm.”

For Life students in China, like Ossie Carney, the experience is culture shock. An excerpt from his journal:

After I finally fell asleep, my doze was interrupted by the van coming to a stop because the others in the car had to have a restroom break. This was an experience in itself. A HUGE experience. This was my first time experiencing a public rest area on the highway in China. A HUGE experience! (LOL) They didn’t have any toilets. Not because they can’t afford them but because it is Chinese custom. I was thoroughly shocked. No pics were taken here because by now it was dark outside and besides, it’s a restroom. You know OSHA wouldn’t like that. WAIT!!! I’m in China. Who cares what OSHA likes and doesn’t like?

More than shock value is involved here. “Our students will learn the culture of other countries at the sidewalk level,” says Tim Gross, M.S., D.C., dean of the Life University Clinic System. “They’ll buy and cook their own food and do all of the things necessary for daily living in the foreign environment. This includes learning real language skills, not as tourists but like the people who live their whole lives there. They’ll overcome their fear of the unknown and learn to pay attention to their environment. All this will teach our students to be adaptable, flexible and creative.”

When Gross visited the Great Wall, he says the experience impressed him with the Chinese ethic of dedication, hard work and perseverance. “Some say we’re losing that ethic in the entitlement cultures of the West. You know what? Our students are going to get it back.”

Gross believes students will learn to deeply appreciate other cultures, respect other world citizens more fully and even think like other people of the world. The students get a crash course—a cultural sink-or-swim—that forces them to examine their personal belief systems and take inventory of their values. This will have immediate benefit in their ability to relate to the increasing diversity of their patient base wherever these students set up practice. Long-term, though, these Life graduates will be able to operate successfully in that entire new world paradigm marching toward us whether we like it or not.

“Students who go through the Life clinic experience in China and other countries, too,” says Downes, “will never be the same.”

Nor will the world itself. Growing faster than any other nation, China is expected to surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy within 20 years. China-based factories already make 70 percent of the world’s toys, 60 percent of its bicycles, half its shoes and one-third of its luggage. China brings to the competitive marketplace not only the advantage of low wages but also an impressive amount of technological know-how and manufacturing capability, thanks to American, European and Japanese companies that have set up operations there. The economic, educational, social and political implications of China’s growth will touch every American’s way of life in one way or another. And sooner than you think.

The Life student clinic experience is a taste of future reality in health care as well. Students render care at the Number One People’s Hospital of ZiGong, and Life University maintaining the control of the delivery of chiropractic care. Along with a department of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the hospital has all the standard departments of Western medicine—orthopedics, internal medicine, neurology and surgery. “While they view chiropractic as a distinct profession, they don’t see it as a stand-alone or alternative method of health care,” Downes says.

So students learn to understand and respect the expertise of other disciplines and work in cooperation with the mainstream. What chiropractors so far have been largely unable to accomplish in the United States—full integration into mainstream health care without professional compromise—chiropractic in China has accomplished from the start. Although the professional recognition isn’t formalized yet, it’s happening informally every day.

“We’re talking about the future of education, the future of health care and the future of world citizenship,” Downes says. We’re also talking about enriching student lives today. Here’s the flavor of Ossie’s experience so far, even before he adjusted anybody:

At lunch, there were two little boys that gathered their courage and asked me questions. You know I will do anything for the children. With this newfound courage, the children along with their parents wanted to take pictures with me at just about every stop. I kind of felt special. OK! (LOL) I did feel special. I love the children. There were also several of the other tourists that asked to take pictures with me. Men and women…. Like George [the other Life chiropractic student] said though, “You have touched so many people’s lives because they have never and may never in their future see a black man in person.” That meant a lot to me. Who wouldn’t want to touch the lives of the masses in a large way that required so little of me? For me! For my family! For my people! And for chiropractic!

That’s it. Students participating in Life’s international clinic programs are changing themselves and all those whose lives they touch. They are not only changing the face of health care. In a very tangible way they are changing the world.

Randy Heuston is the special assistant to the president of Life University and a member of the TCL editorial board.

Paving the Way
Life graduate Cory Rodnick, M.S., D.C., Ph.D., gets the credit for helping set things up in China. Several years ago a patient encouraged him to go to China and helped him establish contacts with government officials there.

“The first time we went, I was scared to death. Here we were, just a handful of chiropractors, working with the Public Affairs Office of the Chinese Communist Party. I was pretty nervous,” Rodnick recalls.

The group’s first goal was to explain chiropractic to medical and government leaders. Next, they worked to create a name in Chinese for chiropractic. “Then, their medical community established clinical trials where they evaluated the health of hospital patients before and after receiving chiropractic care,” Rodnick says. “Rather than seeing side effects from care—something they’re always watching for in treatment approaches—they actually observed side benefits they weren’t expecting.”

Over the next few years, government officials and medical leaders from China visited the United States to learn more about chiropractic. And ultimately, with the full support of the local Chinese government and medical community, involvement of more chiropractors and support from the Michigan Chiropractic Association, the chiropractors opened a clinic within a hospital in China.

“Thanks to Dr. Rodnick,” says Tim Gross, D.C., dean of clinics, “the way was opened for Life University to bring the needed resources to fund a student clinic. This is a great example of how Life and its alumni can work together for the growth of chiropractic.”