ACAHM Adopts New Comprehensive Standards and Criteria
The Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine (ACAHM) approved revisions to its Comprehensive Standards and Criteria for Accreditation at its February 2026 meeting (2026 Standards).
Standards and their criteria are the written benchmarks, conditions, and thresholds adopted by the Commission to: (1) assess whether the quality of an institution/program merits accreditation status, and (2) maintain a culture of continuous improvement of academic quality at the institutions/programs.
The 2026 Standards maintain ACAHM’s longstanding focus on institutional/programmatic quality and the education and training needs of students while updating expectations to ensure continued compliance with federal recognition criteria and responsiveness to developments in the profession. The 2026 Standards include an entirely new framework for the professional competencies that graduates of each program are expected to achieve (see criterion 7.04).
The Commission’s review process, outlined in ACAHM’s Standards Review Policy, incorporated feedback from institutions/programs and peer evaluators who have experience with ACAHM’s standards and integrated feedback from stakeholders and communities of interest received from a call for public comments.
A red-lined comparison of ACAHM’s previous 2024 Standards to its current 2026 Standards is available to assist institutions/programs in thoroughly recognizing the revisions. Institutions/programs are encouraged to review the red-lined comparison of the current and revised Standards and to direct questions about implementation to ACAHM’s Director of Accreditation Services at jason.wright@acahm.org
All accreditation reports and applications submitted to ACAHM on or after March 1, 2026, are accountable for and must address the 2026 Standards.
POTENTIAL REVISIONS TO PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS
In accordance with ACAHM’s Standards Review Policy, the Commission, through its Standards and Criteria Committee, conducts comprehensive, on-going reviews of its Standards and Criteria for Accreditation.
In recognition of stakeholder concerns regarding the cost of education and potential changes to federal financial aid availability, the Commission is currently evaluating its program admissions requirements (see criterion 5.02) and its minimum program length requirements (see criterion 7.02). The Commission welcomes constructive suggestions for specific edits to the relevant criteria and will provide all stakeholders, including institutions, students, and the public opportunities to review proposed revisions and provide feedback. Suggested edits should be sent to comments@acahm.org