Board adopts 2025–2030 strategic plan with 38 objectives across six goal areas

The California Board of Naturopathic Medicine adopted its 2025–2030 strategic plan on Oct. 4, approving a final draft that contains 38 objectives across six goal areas.

The plan, developed with an external facilitator and staff input, organizes objectives by goal: licensing (6 objectives), continuing education (2), enforcement (6), laws and regulations (10), board administration (5) and stakeholder outreach (9). Board members reviewed the draft, suggested wording and ordering changes — including elevating work on the naturopathic formulary and clarifying the board’s approach to possible legislative actions — and then approved the amended plan by roll-call vote.

Board President Dara Thompson noted extensive preparatory work by staff and the facilitator that shortened the planning session and allowed members to focus on priorities. “We did a lot of preparation ahead of time,” she said; that groundwork, she added, helped the session run efficiently while still enabling substantive board input.

During deliberations board members discussed a long-standing statutory obligation related to the naturopathic formulary and agreed to add a concise, high-priority objective to update the formulary “as stated in the law” to reflect advances in medicine and training. Members also retained a separate continuing-education goal, citing statutory limits on the board’s current continuing-education authority and the need for a focused agenda item to address that constraint.

The board unanimously approved the final plan and directed staff to produce a polished version with the president’s foreword and updated officer names for publication. The board set a goal of returning the document with final formatting and a photo of the president; staff will circulate the completed plan to members once design and formatting are finished.