Bastyr University is a private alternative medicine university with campuses in Kenmore, Washington, and San Diego, California. Programs include naturopathy, acupuncture, Traditional Asian medicine, nutrition, herbal medicine, ayurvedic medicine, psychology, and midwifery.Bastyr's programs teach and research topics that are considered pseudoscience, quackery, and fake by the scientific and medical communities. Quackwatch, a group against health fraud, put Bastyr University on its list of "questionable organizations" as a school which is "accredited but not recommended".Bastyr University and similar naturopathic programs are not accredited as medical schools but as special programs that are overseen by a naturopathic council which is not required to be scientific. Bastyr's naturopathic program has been accused by critics of misrepresenting its medical rigor and its ability to train primary care clinicians.
The evolution of the vertebrate visual system involves numerous biological systems, and may include field of view (FOV) transformations linked to changes in eye position within the cranium. Overall, FOV orientations are driven by ecological factors such as habitat, locomotor mode and foraging techniques. Rabbits typically have a divergent, wide FOV and are characterized as looking sideways, contrasted with the convergent, forward-looking orientations of humans. Under-appreciated morphological variation in the rabbit skull, particularly in facial tilt angles related to locomotory mode, suggests greater diversity in rabbit FOV than previously shown. To test this, we capture orbit orientations using landmark-based morphometric methods on a large existing digital skull dataset that represents all genera and most species of crown leporids. We find strong evolutionary relationships between downward facial tilting and the position of their orbits. Cursorial species tilt their faces more ventrally (e.g. most Lepus spp.), and their orbits are more divergent. Leporid species also exhibit a wide range of orbital vergence angles, similar to primates. We propose that leporid cranial specializations, such as facial tilt and divergent orbit positions, modify their FOV to allow them to better evade predators by capturing a complete view of their environment at the horizon.
Digital innovations in healthcare can improve its quality and access, but evidence also reveals threats to health equity, conceptualized as a digital divide. This divide results from existing inequities in both access to and the ability to use digital technologies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to investigate temporal trends in the use of specific digital health applications (DHAs) and (2) to examine their use among different population groups. The analysis is based on two cross-sectional, online surveys conducted in Germany in 2020 (N = 1,570) and 2022 (N = 1,200). Participants were recruited by an external survey company. Commonly provided DHAs in Germany, like online services (online appointment booking or online request for medication), online video consultations, and insurer applications for personal data exchange, were included. Socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and health-related indicators were assessed. For data analysis, chi-squared tests, U-tests, and logistic regression analyses were used. DHA use increased from 2020 to 2022, with the use of online services growing the most. A digital divide was observed. Lower use was identified among older generations and those with low educational attainment and low subjective social status. Additionally, digital (health) literacy, and positive attitudes toward DHAs were associated with increased DHA use. The findings indicate the existence of a digital divide that persists over time. The analysis underscores the need for interventions to mitigate related inequities. Beyond improving access to DHAs, interventions to promote digital (health) literacy are of paramount importance.
Background Electronic health records (EHRs) from community-based naturopathic clinics represent a valuable resource for practice-based research. However, no standardized infrastructure exists for aggregating and standardizing these data across clinical sites. Further, analyzing unstructured data from EHRs remains a challenge. This methods-feasibility pilot developed a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant, cloud-based naturopathic EHR research database with infrastructure supporting multi-site data aggregation, de-identification, and free-text treatment extraction. The pilot evaluated the database’s utility through patient population characterization, treatment pattern analysis, and proof-of-concept analyses of clinician-ordered treatments and longitudinal trajectories within hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c)-defined cohorts. Methods Retrospective EHR data were extracted via the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) API from seven community naturopathic clinics in Washington State and were loaded into a structured cloud-based research database. Records were de-identified using automated protected health information detection and confirmed by a manual audit. Clinician-ordered treatments were extracted from clinical notes, categorized into 12 treatment modalities and three practice metrics, and validated through manual review of a stratified random sample (positive predictive value [PPV] 93.3%, 95% CI: 90–96%). HbA1c-based subgroups were analyzed as exemplar use cases for evaluating treatment extraction and longitudinal signal detection, using paired t-tests (first vs. last HbA1c) within glycemic subgroups. Results The assembled database included 58,498 patients (mean age 42.7 years; 68.1% female), 469,162 clinical encounters, 858,394 clinical notes, and 3.6 million observations (labs/vitals) spanning 18 years (2008–2026). Common documented conditions included fatigue (29.8%), vitamin D deficiency (9.6%), and insomnia (8.0%). In a cohort with elevated HbA1c (n = 2,864), the most frequently documented treatment modalities were nutritional supplements (80.1%), diet/nutrition counseling (47.3%), and botanical medicine (43.6%). Longitudinal HbA1c analyses (n = 5,576) showed significant declines in both diabetes and prediabetes subgroups (both p < 0.001), demonstrating the database’s capacity to detect clinically meaningful change over time. Conclusions This pilot demonstrates the feasibility of transforming multi-clinic naturopathic EHR data into a queryable research database using a HIPAA-compliant cloud-based pipeline with validated treatment extraction capabilities. The resulting infrastructure supports diverse analytic applications, providing a scalable foundation for practice-based research across complementary and integrative health clinical settings.
