Is this program actually accredited?

It's a fair question to want answered plainly — "accredited" gets thrown around loosely in this field, and for a licensed profession like acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, it isn't a small detail. It determines whether your degree is recognized for state licensure and whether you can access federal financial aid at all.

Here's the actual standing, stated directly:

A couple of things worth being precise about, since this is exactly the kind of fact where vague language causes real problems later:

• ACAHM accredits the programs — this is the body relevant to acupuncture/TCM education specifically, not a general regional accreditor.
• BPPE approval is a separate, state-level authorization to operate as a school in California — it isn't the same thing as programmatic accreditation, but both matter.
• These two facts don't rotate or change often, but accreditation status is exactly the kind of thing worth confirming from the source rather than taking anyone's word for it — including this page's.

The official page to check directly: Five Branches Accreditation

One honest caveat: if you're evaluating another school's accreditation status as part of comparing programs, that's a fact only that school's own materials can confirm — accreditors and approvals aren't interchangeable between institutions, so it's worth checking each one directly rather than assuming.

What's prompting the question for you — are you weighing whether a degree here would qualify you for licensure in a particular state, or comparing accreditation across a few schools you're looking at?