Collaboration with pedagogic inspired standards in mind.

CCAM Research Partners began as an arranged meeting between two deans of competing schools of acupuncture and Oriental medicine in Chicago.
Their goal was to compare best practices for the future of Traditional Chinese Medicine and its practitioners in the United States.
Their outcome was the formation of CCAM Research Partners.

Our Founding Directors

Jeannette Hoyt, MPH
​Executive Director

Jeannette is a health care and language arts teacher at City Colleges of Chicago. As Director, Coalition for Safe Acupuncture Practice, she advocates for the AOM profession. Jeannette has also served as a Stakeholder Reviewer, Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Cycles 3, 4 and 5. 

Jeannette's publications include Traditional and Complementary Medicine: Development of Global Policies Governing T&CM from 2002 to the Present (Oriental Medicine Journal, Summer, 2015); Acupuncture and its Place in Integrative Healthcare Practice: the Need to Move from Modality to Profession. (Acupuncture Today (Vol. 16:2, 2015); The Need for a Nonpharmacological Alternative: Acupuncture and its Role in Relieving Chronic and Acute Pain (Oriental Medicine Journal, Winter, 2016).

Jeannette served on the Education Equity Team (2015), Chicago Department of Public Health, leading to their publication Healthy Chicago 2.0. She also presented at DePaul University's 2018, 2019 Health Equity & Social Justice Conference and at the 2020 MEC Global Events AOM Annual Conference 2021.

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Alan Uretz, PhD, LAc
​Director Emeritus

Alan Uretz’s areas of expertise include the fields of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Integrative Medicine, Academics, and Pain Management. His clinical internships at Guangzhou University covered all branches of medicine including gerontology and pain management. Alan’s internship at Cook County Hospital was in the Anesthesiology outpatient pain clinic.  Alan now serves as Dean of Chinese Medicine at the Midwest College of Oriental Medicine; as instructor, Alan lectures on the role of TCM in the western clinical setting.

Balancing the subjective nature of TCM with objective findings required for research,  Alan’s practice experience includes pain management and Integrative Medicine  development. Alan's work on the Clinical Development Committee at American Whole Health focused on building a dialogue across complementary and alternative medicine disciplines to improve clinical outcomes. Presently, Alan also serves as site visitor for the Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.

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Patrick Downie, DC
​Director Emeritus

Patrick Downie graduated
from National College
of Chiropractic in
Lombard, Illinois in
1996 and subsequently completed two years of an in-house, clinically based chiropractic, orthopedic training program. He is currently completing postgraduate coursework in chiropractic neurology.

Patrick has been a professor at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine since 2005 and has extensive lecturing experience within his profession. From 2000-2005, he was the assistant director of an NIH-funded educational grant that introduced complementary and alternative medicine into the graduate and undergraduate nursing programs at Rush University Medical Center. He recently completed three years at an integrative clinic offering chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy and massage therapy.

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Our Present Directors

Brett Rydzon, MPH
Director, Special Projects

 Brett is a Research Associate and Epidemiologist at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC), managing a novel diabetes screening and surveillance program in their emergency department. He is also assisting on two clinical trials regarding a cure for type 1 diabetes via Islet cell transplantation. At the beginning of the pandemic, Brett constructed and managed the database for UIC’s COVID-19 Registry for Research, the data from which are currently being used in several research projects. Prior to his work at UIC, Brett was an epidemiologist at the DuPage County Health Department. He conducted daily, weekly, and monthly reports surveilling communicable diseases.

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Mary J. Rogel, PhD, LAc
Director, Continuing Education

Mary is the proprietor of East Point Associates. Her practice includes TCM and Restorative Kinematics modalities. Mary holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from The University of Chicago and spent ten years teaching psychology and 25 years doing health research and consulting before becoming a full-time acupuncturist.  She has been publishing and teaching Restorative Kinematics to practitioners in various health care professions since 1999, and she is a licensed Acupuncture Continuing Education Provider and a licensed Massage Therapist Continuing Education Provider in Illinois and a PDA Provider for the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM).  She was Editor of Oriental Medicine Journal from 2009-2019, and in 2014 she produced a successful pilot for a radio show entitled “Rethinking Orthopedics.”

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