The U.S. Spiritist Medical Association (SMA-US) was founded immediately after the first U.S. Spiritist Medical Congress in October 2006, following the guidance and inspiration of Dr. Marlene Nobre, who was the President of the International Spiritist Medical Association (SMA-INT).
The founding members formed the first Board of Directors: Sonia Doi, MD, PhD (President), Silvia Knoploch, MD (Vice-President), Claudio Petrillo, MD (Treasurer) and Geetha Chilakamarri, MD (Program Director), and Leticia Klausner de Oliveira, MD (Secretary). The nascent SMA-US took responsibility for the US Spiritist Medical Congress and has been organizing events bi-annually. The Board of Directors developed the bylaws in 2008 and the SMA-US was granted a 501(c)(3) educational non-profit status on December 2, 2010.
The mission of the SMA-US is to advance a healthcare approach that values the Spirit as the source of thoughts and emotions expressed by the mind and the body. The SMA-US is an organization founded and directed by physicians who are Spiritists. Spiritism, as codified by Allan Kardec, has three interconnected aspects: science, philosophy and religion. Spiritism’s main tenets include that the human being is a Spirit (Soul) that gives life to its physical body and as such, spiritual balance or imbalance influences the health status of the physical body. The SMA-US supports a body-mind-soul approach, which is in line with the concept of integrative medicine to promote spiritual, mental and physical balance in adjunct to traditional care to achieve a complete well-being.
The motto of SMA-US is bridging medicine and spirituality. A growing body of scientific research has assessed the role of spirituality in medicine addressing a wide range of topics, e.g., methods of assessing spirituality in patient care, benefits of spiritual practices used in adjunct to standard-of-care, response to treatment in patients who identify themselves as spiritual/religious and those who don’t, neurobiological mechanisms of faith, and others. The focus of SMA-US is to follow and foster scientific advancement in spirituality applied to medicine, which is attained by promoting conferences where experts in the field of spirituality and medicine/science share their experiences and knowledge with healthcare professionals and the general public. All those who share the ideals of the SMA-US are most welcome to join us as members and to help in advancing spiritual approaches in medicine.