Preventive Acupuncture for Healthier Communities

Expanding access to affordable preventive care for low-income and underinsured communities facing stress-related health risks.

Investing in prevention to improve health outcomes and reduce reliance on costly reactive care.

Pilot Program

The Alliance is piloting an innovative preventive acupuncture care model through partner clinics in Santa Rosa and San Francisco, serving individuals experiencing stress-related physiological dysfunction and early chronic disease risk.

Delivered by doctoral-trained, licensed acupuncturists, the program combines preventive acupuncture treatment, targeted short-course care plans, standardized screening and intake, and ongoing outcomes evaluation. The goal is to identify and address health concerns early—before they develop into more serious and costly chronic conditions.

Why It Matters

Many chronic illnesses are preceded by early physiological imbalances that often go unaddressed because preventive care remains inaccessible for many communities. By providing early intervention, the pilot seeks to improve individual health outcomes while demonstrating a scalable, cost-effective approach to preventive healthcare delivery.

Building a Scalable Model

The Alliance is seeking pilot funding to support direct patient care, clinic operations, program coordination, data collection, and outcomes evaluation.

Our long-term vision is to validate this model and expand it across a network of community-based clinic partners throughout Northern California—bringing preventive acupuncture care to more people before preventable health challenges become chronic disease.

  • Chronic disease accounts for the majority of healthcare spending in the United States and is often preceded by prolonged periods of untreated physiological stress and imbalance. However, many individuals do not access care until symptoms progress into:

    • chronic illness

    • emergency department visits

    • high-cost medical interventions

    This pattern reflects a significant gap in access to early-stage, preventive healthcare.


  • New Rivers Alliance focuses on early physiological dysregulation, including:

    • stress response imbalance

    • sleep disruption

    • autonomic nervous system dysregulation

    • inflammatory signaling imbalance

    We use acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine–informed care to support regulation of these systems before chronic disease becomes structurally established.

  • The Pilot Program

    During the pilot phase, the Alliance provides preventive acupuncture-based care for underserved populations experiencing stress-related physiological dysfunction and early risk for chronic disease. Services include standardized intake and eligibility screening, short-course preventive treatment protocols, individualized acupuncture care, and structured outcome tracking and evaluation. Care is delivered directly by the founding clinical team to ensure consistency in protocol implementation, patient experience, and data collection across partner clinic sites.

    Expanded Services Model

    Following the pilot, the Alliance will scale services through a network of partner clinic sites across Northern California. The expanded model will transition to a hybrid delivery system in which trained, contracted licensed acupuncturists provide care using standardized preventive protocols, intake procedures, and outcome tracking systems developed during the pilot. This structure is designed to maintain clinical consistency while significantly increasing access to early intervention care for underserved communities.

  • We prioritize individuals who are:

    • low-income and/or underinsured

    • experiencing stress-related physiological dysfunction

    • at risk for early-stage chronic health conditions

    This ensures care is directed toward populations with the greatest barriers to preventive and early-intervention healthcare services.