Joseph M. Helms, MD has been the driving force behind the emergence of medical acupuncture as a discipline in modern medicine. He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and UCLA School of Medicine. His qualifications include family medicine, pain management, medical acupuncture, and homeopathy.

Dr. Helms has been teaching acupuncture to physicians since 1977. He has trained over five thousand doctors in the United States through Helms Medical Institute courses, in collaboration with the continuing medical education divisions of Stanford and UCLA Schools of Medicine. He is the author of Acupuncture Energetics: A Clinical Approach for Physicians.

Dr. Helms is the founding president of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, has served on the acupuncture advisory committees for the World Health Organization and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Helms served as a professor of medical acupuncture on the adjunct clinical faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine, and maintains private practice in medical acupuncture in Berkeley, California.

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Since 2014, he has served as Founder and President of Acus Foundation, the leading provider of military medical acupuncture training in the U.S.

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