News Release

U-M Medical School complementary and alternative medicine curriculum an interdisciplinary model

Grant and Award Announcement

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Recent reports indicate that although 42 percent of the U.S. population uses some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), most individuals withhold this information from their physicians because they fear lack of understanding, disapproval, or both. Because of this, health professionals increasingly acknowledge the need for a deeper awareness and understanding of the alternative treatment modalities used by their patients.

Medical schools can provide an important venue for physicians, medical students, and others in the health and social sciences to learn about and explore CAM theories, therapies and techniques. The U-M Medical School recently received a $1.5 million, five-year grant from the NIH to integrate a CAM learning thread into the educational program for the M.D. degree, to develop a graduate sequence in holistic health and healing, and to create a CAM faculty development program.

"The CAM educational program we have proposed will bring together healers, teachers and practitioners from alternative and conventional medicine who would not ordinarily come into contact with each other," says Sara Warber, M.D., co-director, U-M CAM Research Center, lecturer in the Department of Family Medicine, and principal investigator for the new NIH grant.

The new CAM curriculum draws on faculty from the university and practitioners from the community who will use didactics, discussion groups, workshops, and clinical experiences to enhance learning. Educational modules will integrate theory, evidence and practice of CAM into curricula in the U-M Medical School, the Schools of Nursing, Public Health and Social Work, and the Colleges of Pharmacy, Dentistry and Literature, Science and the Arts.

"Helping medical students, faculty, and practitioners increase their knowledge of CAM, particularly when we are also committed to rigorous scientific investigation, reinforces thefundamental importance of the healing relationship shared between physician and patient," Warber says.

Critical to the success of the new CAM program is multidisciplinary faculty development. The faculty scholars program will create a CAM instructional infrastructure in the medical school and across the U-M campus. Each year, five faculty scholars will be selected through a competitive application process; they will spend the year exploring CAM and approaches to integrating CAM into their teaching. CAM practitioners at the U-M and in the community will serve as mentors to the scholars.

The graduate program in holistic health and healing will provide graduate students in social and health sciences with opportunities to acquire academic expertise in CAM theories and practices.

"I believe the NIH selected us for the new educational grant for a number of important reasons. We have already successfully implemented several well-received learning opportunities in the M.D. program; we are also proposing a medical school/health sciences collaboration that isn't seen on many campuses, as well as a faculty training program to assure that the programs can be sustained long-term," says Rita Benn, Ph.D., the center's director of Integrative Health Education Programs.

"A number of medical schools are integrating CAM into their educational programs." says Warber. "What distinguishes our center is an evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach that respects the core practices of both allopathic and alternative medicine. This grant allows us to implement several innovative programs that we hope will improve patient/physician communications, and enliven and renew health care in general." The U-M is the only medical school in the country to hold both a CAM research center grant and a CAM curriculum grant from the NIH.

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