Speakers for the 2025 conference

 Below you will see a list of the distinguished speakers for the 2025 AACP conference, complete with their bios and talk titles for this year.

Debra Betts (PhD)

Acupuncture, press needles and cupping in the treatment of pregnancy related lower back and pelvic pain

Debra is the author of “The Essential Guide to Acupuncture in Pregnancy & Childbirth” published in 2006 and subsequently translated into German and French. In 2008 Debra founded New Zealand’s first hospital antenatal acupuncture clinic to provide free acupuncture treatment in conjunction with the New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (NZSATCM) . In 2014 she completed her PhD on the use of acupuncture in threatened miscarriage through the University of Western Sydney and went on the develop and teach on a master’s programme for acupuncturists though NZSATCM.

Currently she is programme lead for a blended learning acupuncture programme for health professionals and founder of an online mentoring and for acupuncturists in pregnancy care. In addition, Debra continues to publish articles relating to acupuncture use in pregnancy and lecture internationally on the use of maternity acupuncture and acupressure.

Fanyi Meng

Acupuncture Management of Male Problems and Infertility

Fanyi is a well experience TCM practitioner and teacher with established reputation in managing emotional problem, male and female infertility, with many clinical reports published in these fields. He is the programme leader/senior lecture of BSc (Hons) Acupuncture at Lincoln College, validated by Open University, and also visiting professors of several universities. He started his university study of Chinese medicine in 1978, got his bachelor degree in medicine, and also Medical Master Degree (clinical research degree). In 1992, he became a senior academic at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM). In 2000 he moved to Middlesex University to lead the teaching clinic of Chinese Medicine courses. From 2004, he lead the establishment of BSc (Hons) Acupuncture at University of Lincoln. He stands on boards and committees of TCM organizations worldwide in the past 20 years. His publishing include 5 books and more than 50 papers.

Matthew Bauer

The Evidence Behind Treating Peripheral Neuropathy and the PN Campaign

Matthew Bauer became interested in acupuncture and Chinese medicine after injuring his back in 1973 and seeking out ways to treat that injury. He studied acupressure from a Japanese Shiatsu Master and then began studying Taoist philosophy from a 74th generation Taoist Master in 1978.  He enrolled in acupuncture college in 1983 and began his practice after getting his California Acupuncture License in 1986. Matthew went on to study qi-gong and advanced healing techniques and incorporates those techniques into his practice. In 2014 Matthew founded the Acupuncture Now Foundation (ANF), an international non-profit that works to educate the public, healthcare providers, and health policymakers about the practice of acupuncture. Matthew is currently working with the ANF on a campaign to raise awareness about acupuncture as a front-line treatment for peripheral neuropathy.

Sandro Graca

Synergy Through Excellence - Bridging Research, Practice, and Innovation for Clinical Impact

Sandro Graca is a Board member of the Society for Acupuncture Research and a Director at Evidence Based Acupuncture. He completed an MSc with Merit at Middlesex University (in conjunction with the Northern College of Acupuncture), where he published research on acupuncture for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Currently, he is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Wolverhampton, funded by a joint scholarship with the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire, focusing on PCOS and women’s health.

Sandro serves as the Social Media Officer and is a member of the Early-Career Special Interest Group of the Androgen-Excess and PCOS Society. Alongside numerous peer-reviewed publications in acupuncture and integrative medicine, he contributed to the 2023 update of the international PCOS guidelines. He is the lead author on the Cochrane Review Group on acupuncture for assisted reproductive technology and serves on editorial boards for several integrative medicine journals (USA, Europe, and Korea).

David Coggin-Carr

Acupuncture Research: An Editor’s Perspective

David Coggin-Carr is a UK+US dual-trained obstetrician, Maternal-Fetal Medicine subspecialist and early career physician-scientist at the University of Vermont. He holds an MSc in Western Medical Acupuncture from the University of Hertfordshire and is accredited/board-certified by the British Medical Acupuncture Society (BMAS) and American Board of Medical Acupuncture. Since 2015, he has served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Acupuncture in Medicine (owned by BMAS and published by SAGE), which is currently the highest impact acupuncture-specific publication in the world. He is a strong supporter of acupuncture research and is interested in the evidence-based integration of acupuncture and related techniques for conditions in which they have found to be effective, as well as the exploration of novel applications using animal models. His lab is currently examining the efficacy, safety and mechanisms of action of electroacupuncture in a diet-induced rat model of obesity characterized by maternal insulin resistance and fetal growth restriction.

Ian Appleyard

Mapping acupuncture styles in practice using a practitioner survey

Ian Appleyard is the Research and Policy Manager at the British Acupuncture Council. Ian lived in Japan for a year (1995-6) and studied acupuncture with a private practitioner, Ikeda Yuji. He graduated with BSc in Acupuncture from Westminster University in 1998. In 2003, Ian moved to China and undertook further clinical training at Shu-Guang and Long-Hua hospitals in Shanghai, as well as the Jiangsu Provincial Hospital of TCM, Nanjing.  Ian has advanced level speaking and reading in Mandarin. He has worked as a private practitioner in Hove and Kendal. He was course director for Acupuncture at London South Bank University Confucius Institute for TCM from 2008-2018. His PhD, Acupuncture and moxibustion for osteoarthritis of the knee: a component analysis approach, was completed in 2018. His main area of research interest is sham/placebo acupuncture and trial design.

Evren Kul Panza

An Audit of the Effectiveness of Acupuncture in a Physical Medicine Rehabilitation Clinic

Dr. Evren Kul Panza is a specialist of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) since 2004 . She got her Diploma of Western Medical Acupuncture in British Medical Acupuncture Society(BMAS) in 2018. She worked as a trustee and Board and Acreditation  member in BMAS as well. She lives in İstanbul/Turkey. She is specialized in various fields of PMR such as Medical Acupuncture, , dry needling, Neural Therapy, Kinesiotaping, Intraarticular injections, PRP, mesotherapy,  Manipulation, and  Ortopedic Reflexology,  She has over 15 publications in SCI-journals, as well as oral and poster presentations . She is a lecturer in Physiotherapy department of Usküdar University Faculty of Medical Sciences. She speaks Turkish, English, Italian, and basic level of German. She worked as interpreter  in various courses. She took the Diploma for European Board of PMR- the ‘senior’ level. She completed her Psychotherapy,-Adolescent Psychotherapy, and Marriage Counselling treatments with IICP (international integrative Cognitive Psychotherapy Association) in 2020.  

Mike Cummings

The future of acupuncture

Mike qualified in medicine in 1987 and joined the Royal Air Force as a general duties medical officer in 1989, where he first encountered acupuncture. He trained in Western medical acupuncture with the British Medical Acupuncture Society (BMAS) when still in the RAF and became the first Director of Education for the BMAS in 1997. In 2001 he became the fulltime Medical Director of the BMAS.

He is an Honorary Clinical Specialist at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine.

He has been an editor for the journal Acupuncture in Medicine [IF 2.4] since 2000.

He is a reviewer for Annals of Internal Medicine and many other journals and has acted as a specialist adviser to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the UK.

Mike is the author of the BMAS Blog – a research blog on acupuncture.

Publications summary

~111 total publications

– citations listed here: goo.gl/6XQeXv