Integrative Medicine Program Achieves Center Status

The Program for Complementary and Integrative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) has been renamed the Center for Integrative Medicine, reflecting its growth and increasing significance at the institution.

The program began in 2005 under the direction of Kathi J. Kemper, MD, MPH, professor of pediatrics, social sciences and health policy, and family and community medicine, and the Caryl J. Guth Chair for Integrative Medicine.

As defined by the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, “Integrative medicine is a system of comprehensive care that emphasizes wellness and healing of the whole person, with special emphasis on patient participation, and attention to mental and spiritual health. The knowledge and use of complementary and alternative medicine is an important aspect of integrative medicine.”

In 2005, Wake Forest Baptist was one of the first 35 academic health centers in North America to be accepted into the consortium.

The Center for Integrative Medicine oversees a collaboration of clinical, educational, community-outreach, and research activities focusing on wellness and healing, including acupuncture; the arts, music, and the environment; communication and counseling skills; dietary supplements and herbal medicine; Healing Touch; massage therapy; mindfulness-based stress management, tai chi and qi gong, and yoga.

“This promotion of the program to ‘center’ status is a mark of its maturity and a recognition of the fact that its efforts are of great value to the institution,” said William B. Applegate, MD, president of Wake Forest University Health Sciences and dean of the medical school. “This center is another example of the importance of programs that cross multiple disciplines.”

The center now comprises more than 80 faculty and administrators from a variety of fields and responsibilities at the medical center. Faculty leaders include Thomas Arcury, PhD (Family and Community Medicine); Nancy Avis, PhD (Public Health Sciences); Ski Chilton, PhD (Physiology and Pharmacology); Charles Tegeler, MD (Neurology); and Walton Curl, MD (Orthopedic Surgery).

The center has five main areas of activity: research, education, clinical care, leadership development, and community outreach. In 2008, research in integrative medicine generated more than $27 million in research grant income. In conjunction with Natural Triad magazine, the enter cosponsors a series of seminars on community-oriented integrative medicine.

Kemper is a nationally recognized authority on complementary and integrative medicine, who last year received the inaugural IPC Leadership Award from the Integrative Pediatrics Council. Earlier this year, she was called to testify before a US Senate committee studying integrative medicine as a key component of health care reform, and coauthored a white paper on research priorities for the Institute of Medicine’s 2009 Summit on Integrative Medicine. She and other center-affiliated faculty are interviewed frequently by news and health media from around the country.

More information about the center is available through its website: www.wfubmc.edu/cim.

Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center

is an academic health system comprising North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Brenner Children’s Hospital, Wake Forest University Physicians, and Wake Forest University Health Sciences, which operates the university’s School of Medicine and Piedmont Triad Research Park. The system comprises 1,056 acute-care, rehabilitation and long-term-care beds and has been ranked as one of “America’s Best Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report since 1993. Wake Forest Baptist also holds the Gold Seal of Approval from the Joint Commission, the nation’s esteemed standards-setting and accrediting body for health-care quality. Wake Forest Baptist is ranked 32nd in the nation by America’s Top Doctors for the number of its doctors considered best by their peers. The institution ranks in the top third in funding by the National Institutes of Health and fourth in the Southeast in revenues from its licensed intellectual property.