How the VA, Medical Education, and Helixona Are Leading a National Shift in Care

For decades, the U.S. healthcare system has defined success by the identification and management of disease. Specialists have been trained to treat organs rather than people, and outcomes have been measured in lab values rather than lived experiences. Yet across the nation, a quiet revolution is underway — one that seeks not only to extend life, but to restore wholeness.

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is leading this transformation through its Whole Health System, a model that is rapidly becoming a blueprint for the future of care. Its framework redefines medicine around a simple but radical shift in focus: from “What’s the matter with you?” to “What matters to you?”

At Helixona, we believe this shift represents the future not just for veterans, but for all patients. It reflects a deep truth that has guided our work since inception: healing happens when care addresses the full complexity of human life — the physical, emotional, and environmental — with empathy and intention.

The VHA’s Whole Health System: A Redefinition of Care

The VHA’s Whole Health System was developed to reimagine care for veterans after years of fragmented and reactive medicine. The model is structured around three core components:

1. The Pathway: A process that helps veterans define their mission, aspiration, and purpose — the “why” behind their health goals.
2. Well-Being Programs: Opportunities for self-care through nutrition, mindfulness, movement, sleep, and connection — often integrating complementary and integrative health approaches.
3. Whole Health Clinical Care: The medical system itself, redesigned to support the individual’s goals and values, not just their diagnoses.
   
   

By weaving together conventional medicine, evidence-based complementary therapies, and personal empowerment, the VHA’s program has delivered measurable results. Veterans who engage in Whole Health programs report higher satisfaction, improved well-being, reduced reliance on medications, and greater sense of control over their health decisions.

This approach is not simply a new initiative — it is a systems-level transformation. Clinics are reorganized, teams are retrained, and leadership is taught to think differently. Every component of care is designed around the patient’s lived experience and definition of wellness.

Education Joins the Movement: The Future of Medical Training

The movement toward Whole-Person Care is not confined to hospitals or policy — it’s now reshaping the foundation of medical education itself.

Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU), where Helixona co-founder Dr. Tom Bakman, DC serves on the Board of Regents, has become one of the first academic institutions in the nation to build its entire curriculum around the principles of Whole Person Health.

SCU’s new School of Whole Health is re-envisioning how future physicians, chiropractors, and integrative practitioners are trained. Rather than layering “wellness” courses onto a conventional medical model, SCU has pulled away from the traditional disease-centered framework altogether. The university now teaches health professionals to see patients as multidimensional beings — physical, emotional, social, and spiritual — and to collaborate across disciplines to achieve true healing.

This educational transformation complements what the VA is doing on the systems side and what Helixona is implementing on the clinical side. Together, these movements represent the three essential pillars of a healthcare renaissance:

• Institutional Transformation (VA): Systemic redesign and national adoption of Whole Health care.
• Educational Transformation (SCU): A new model of medical training grounded in the science and philosophy of Whole Person Care.
• Clinical Transformation (Helixona): Real-world implementation of those principles in practice, showing what whole-person care feels like for patients today.
  
  

This alignment across sectors signals more than progress — it signals inevitability. Healthcare is evolving, and the future is already here.

When the System Fails the Patient: A Personal Turning Point

For me, the need for change is not theoretical — it’s deeply personal. Years ago, I sat in a liver specialist’s office after months of escalating fatigue, pain, and inconclusive test results. I had finally found evidence of mold toxicity, and I believed I had discovered the cause of my declining health.

The physician glanced at my labs and shrugged. He told me he didn’t know anything about mold or its impact on the liver, so it probably wasn’t relevant. His only advice was to “lose weight, eat right, and come back in six months.”

When I asked why I should return if he had no plan to help me, his answer was chilling:

“Eventually, you’ll need a transplant. That’s when we’ll really be able to help — and make our money.”

In that moment, I realized how broken the system had become. It was not designed to heal — only to intervene once disease had reached a profitable threshold. I left that appointment not just disappointed, but determined.

That day became the seed of what would one day become Helixona — a place built for patients who refuse to accept hopelessness as a care plan.

Helixona and Whole Health: A Shared Philosophy of Healing

Helixona’s model of care — Eliminate. Nourish. Repair.™ — mirrors the VHA’s Whole Health framework, translating its principles into a patient experience that integrates advanced medical science with personalized healing.

• Eliminate: Remove what harms — toxins, infections, inflammation, and the environmental or emotional burdens that keep the body in distress.
• Nourish: Replenish what’s missing — nutrients, oxygen, energy, rest, and human connection.
• Repair: Restore what’s been disrupted — cellular communication, neurological balance, and the body’s innate ability to heal.
  
  

Just as the VHA builds around a Personal Health Plan (PHP) — a roadmap based on what matters most to each individual — Helixona begins every care relationship by identifying each patient’s “why.” This shift from symptom management to purpose-driven care transforms how people engage with their health. Patients no longer ask, “What do I have?” but rather, “What can I regain?”

A New Harmony in Health Systems

For the first time, healthcare’s three great engines — policy, education, and practice — are moving in the same direction.

• The VA’s Whole Health System proves that large, government-run healthcare can transform into something deeply human.
• SCU’s Whole Health curriculum ensures that the next generation of clinicians will be trained from the start to see patients through a holistic lens.
• Helixona’s clinical model shows how these principles work in real time, blending medical rigor with compassionate, integrative care.
  
  

The result is harmony — a healthcare ecosystem no longer defined by fragmented specialties, but by a shared commitment to healing the person, not just treating the disease.

This convergence also restores purpose to medicine itself. In a fragmented model, providers often feel as powerless as their patients — rushed, constrained by billing codes, and unable to connect deeply with those they serve. Whole-Person Care gives that meaning back. It honors the relationship between clinician and patient as sacred, not transactional.

A Path Forward: From Sickness Management to Systemic Healing

The future of medicine will not be defined by technology alone. It will be defined by humanity. The VA’s Whole Health System, SCU’s Whole Health education model, and Helixona’s clinical practice together mark the beginning of a cultural realignment in healthcare — one that honors both science and soul.

This is the future we are building:

• Where physicians see the person, not just the pathology.
• Where care teams collaborate to nurture, not just to diagnose.
• Where patients are partners, not passive recipients.
• Where success is measured not only in lab results, but in lives restored to purpose.
  
  

We are entering an era when the goal of medicine is no longer just to keep people alive, but to help them truly live.