Collaborative Care for Older Adults (COCOA), Palmer College of Chiropractic.

Integrative medicine (IM) is a subset of interprofessional health care that seeks to join the knowledge and practices of various allopathic and complementary and alternative medicine disciplines in an attempt to offer cost-effective and clinically significant healthcare options for persons with acute or chronic illnesses. Although touted as a means for improving health outcomes and patient satisfaction while possibly lowering costs, further scientific evidence regarding the utility of IM approaches to health services delivery is needed. Collaborative Care for Older Adults (COCOA) is a chiropractic demonstration project that brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers and clinicians from the Palmer Center for Chiropractic Research, Genesis Quad Cities Family Practice Residency, The University of Iowa, and Thomas Jefferson University to study the impact of a model of interprofessional education on geriatric health care. The Health Resources and Services Administration funded COCOA in 2009 to further develop and assess a patient-centered care model for the treatment of low back pain in older adults that uses a team-based approach between medical doctors and doctors of chiropractic.