The Bridge to Wellness Health Center was founded in 1994 by Victoria Porfilio R.N., M.S., Ph.D and believes that every person has worth, dignity, and the capacity for creative self-direction. We provide services that help people lead healthy, productive and fulfilled lives. Our lectures, workshops, weekend retreats, 12 Week Radical Makeover Program and individual consultations will give you the tools you need to bring a new level of awareness to each moment of your life. We help you identify and change the choices, actions, and habits that keep you from being fully alive. Using a combination of lifestyle choices and mindful-based practices, we can help you:

• Lose weight using various hypnotic techniques as well as updated new research
• Enhance health and optimal physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well being
• Find solutions to life problems intuitively
• Discover your innate talents & unleash creative energy
• Find out what your body really needs for healing
• Heal past relationships & improve present ones
• Help loosen attachments to habits and behaviors that inhibit growth and change
• Clarify objectives and expand your vision of what's possible
• Use your natural wisdom to live a life that's meaningful, balanced, and fulfilling
• Make more conscious decisions
• Strengthen your spiritual practice
• Rid yourself of addictions and self sabotaging behaviors

Modern medicine calls for health professionals who:

• Know their science yet honors the body's innate wisdom to heal.
• Treats the whole person, looking beyond symptoms to the underlying cause of illness.
• Will focus on disease prevention and wellness.
• Will function as teachers as well as healers.

This is healthcare for a changing world. Integrative healthcare is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. Integrative medicine has emerged as a potential solution to the American health care crisis. It provides care that is patient-centered, healing oriented, emphasizes the therapeutic relationship, and uses therapeutic approaches originating from conventional and complimentary medicine. Initially driven by consumer demand, the attention integrative medicine places on is - understanding the whole person and assisting with lifestyle change. It is now being recognized as a strategy to address the epidemic of chronic diseases bankrupting our economy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 70% of all deaths are due to chronic diseases. Also according to the CDC, more than $1.7 trillion a year or 75% of all medical expenses are spend on chronic diseases. At the same time we are spending a small fraction of our budget on prevention and health promotion.

Health promotion and preventative care require a different set of skills and attitudes, than conventional and acute care that primary physicians give to their patients. A primary doctor specializes in pharmaceutical care and surgery for many patients. However we need to add other health modalities to that equation.

A team of providers will vary depending on the patients diagnosis and the goal of providing comprehensive, evidence-based health care that addresses mind, body, and spirit. Team members will be drawn from conventional providers such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists, nutritionists, physical therapists, social workers chaplains and also from naturopathic physicians, chiropractors, massage therapists, and instructors in yoga, Tai-chi, and meditation. Physicians, nurse practitioners, and CAM providers who meet the above characteristics may serve as primary health partners. It is important for patients to go to a trained professional in seeking optimal health care.

Know the person that you are getting information and health care from. There are many people out there that are providing information or giving health information and treating people with only a certificate program. I once met a person at a health fair that was calling herself an "Advanced Holistic Care Practitioner". I asked her what kind of medical training she had, and her response was a 40 hour certificate program and a high school diploma. "NO MEDICAL TRAINING, NO STATE LICENSE, NO COURSES IN ANATOMY OR PHYSIOLOGY, NO TRAINING IN NUTRTION, NO TRAINING IN PSYOLOGY, NO COLLEGE DEGREE, NO TRAINING WHAT SO EVER. That is really scary to me, and yet I see it all the time. There are also "Life Coaches" out that have about the same qualifications. So make sure you are seeing a person who has a state license and a professional. With that you are sure that you are seeing someone that has had medical training and standards of care that they need to maintain.

For Integrative Medicine and Healthcare to flourish and provide solutions to our current health care crisis will take systemic change. It will require a commitment to focus on prevention and health promotion. That is exactly what the "Bridge to Wellness Health Center" has been doing since 1995. We have been a pioneer in the field of Integrative Healthcare. Specializing in lectures, workshops, and consultations that look at the whole person for optimal physical, mental, and emotional

In 1997 over 40% of Americans saw an alternative health care practitioner, constituting more than 600 million visits, more than all conventional primary care physicians. By the year 2014 over 65% of Americans are seeing practitioners that integrate both traditional and complementary healthcare. Integrative healthcare is an area of great public interest and activity in the past twenty years. As credible information about complementary medicine becomes available, medical schools, hospitals, insurance companies, and the government are beginning to explore and integrate these practices into mainstream medicine.