ICA’s Core Chiropractic Principle:  The living body possesses an innate ability to adapt and self-health, facilitated by an optimally functioning nervous system, which is improved by chiropractic care.

ICA’s Core Role Message:  The International Chiropractors Association (ICA) promotes, protects, and perpetuates the core principle of chiropractic by ensuring that the public has the right to access chiropractic care focusing on the correction of the vertebral subluxation by safeguarding the privilege of licensed/credentialled chiropractors’ ability to practice chiropractic worldwide. 

An ICA Chiropractor Set the Course:  I was a preschooler when I had my first chiropractic adjustment.  I was fortunate that my first chiropractor was a vitalistic, subluxation focused, ICA member passionate about sharing the message of regular chiropractic care for what we now call whole person health. Dr. Bolen not only helped me recover from being thrown from a horse at age 6; a roller skating crash that left me with chronic headaches at 13, he was there with compassion and the chiropractic adjustment to address the subluxations of trauma after community natural disasters and family tragedy.  He helped shape my understanding of how healing works, which inspired and empowered me to continuously seek knowledge. It is the embodiment of the BJ quote – “You never know how far reaching something you may think, say, or do today will affect the lives of millions tomorrow.”

My life journey has taken me around the world to the shores of the Red Sea, River Neva, Jordan River, and Caribbean Sea, through the Ivory Tower of the National Institutes of Health and across the marble floors in the Halls of Congress, full circle to the International Chiropractors Association.  I have seen first-hand that the world needs you, — chiropractors who are trained and proficient in identifying vertebral subluxations and correcting them through the chiropractic adjustment. The world needs the ICA, the organization that will always fight for the profession, will always promote the truth about the profession, and will not sell out to medicalization.

Chiropractic Needs You in the ICA:  If you are an ICA member – thank you for being a part of the organization that was established 99 years ago to preserve and protect the profession.

 At Dr. Palmers’ direction, we transformed from the Chiropractic Health Bureau which helped get licensure in all 50 US states and territories to the International Chiropractors Association (ICA) so that we could expand the profession and establish the statutory authority in every nation on the planet for chiropractors to be lawfully able to practice.  We have a long way to go to achieve chiropractic being legal and available in every country.  If you are not yet a member of the ICA, I invite you to join.  Wherever you are on your chiropractic journey, ICA is here for you.  Every chiropractor and chiropractic student who cares about building the profession based on the science, art, and philosophy of the profession as the separate and distinct profession that it is needs to join and stay in the ICA to help us achieve our mission, vision and goals.  Sadly, too many chiropractors are sitting on the sidelines.  The ICA will also not tell you how to run your business, not judge your business model, instead we are here to promote and uplift, encourage you to be successful in your endeavors to promote chiropractic care and stay focused on the principle of subluxation detection and correction.  The ICA will advocate for you and provide opportunities for networking and premier post graduate education.

The chiropractic profession and those who seek chiropractic care benefit from the advance training specialties such as Upper Cervical, Pediatrics, Sports, and Chiropractic Biophysics. The ICA’s Councils and affiliates provide this important post graduate education training and have shown how chiropractors can collaborate with other health professions successfully for the benefit of the patient.  The world needs our experts in chiropractic philosophy to continue to share the message of the ‘why’ of chiropractic, so that the 3-legged stool (science-art-philosophy) does not become unbalanced.  The ICA Board completed a Strategic Plan https://www.chiropractic.org/about-us/strategic-plan-2025/  this year which includes our Core Chiropractic Principle and Core Role Message as well as our vision, mission and goals. 

Never Been a Better Time to Be a Chiropractor:  In 2025 we are seeing that the advocacy of the ICA and others in the chiropractic profession has reached the highest levels of the government.  The Make America Health Again Initiative has opened the opportunity for chiropractic to have major advances and for the ICA to help advance the profession.  The principles of vitalism and innate intelligence are threaded into these conversations.  And at the same time, we see some within the profession seeking to medicalize it through scope expansion into prescribing authority and invasive techniques such as injectables. (Some ignore that ‘injectables’ will also backdoor prescribing authority as all products introduced into the body through a needle– even water or ‘natural substances’ are by federal law prescription drugs.)  ICA will always work to protect the profession from being medicalized, that is our responsibility. 

To keep fighting the good fights, to keep advancing principled, vitalistic, subluxation focused chiropractic, the ICA needs full engagement by all in the profession who are like minded.