April 2014 John Weeks Integrator Round-Up: Academia

UCLArts and Healing advances leadership in the creative arts health connection with series of grants and strategic collaborationsAn organization under the umbrella of the integrative medicine consortia at UCLA, UCLArts & Healing, has recently announced a series of initiatives propelling its

UCLArts and Healing advances leadership in the creative arts/health connection with series of grants and strategic collaborations

An organization under the umbrella of the integrative medicine consortia at UCLA, UCLArts & Healing, has recently announced a series of initiatives propelling its work in multiple directions:

• A grant from the Boone Foundation to develop a training program for delivery of "Dance for All", a therapeutic movement and yoga-based program for adolescents and adults with developmental disabilities.
• Completion of the organization's first UCLA undergraduate course on 'Maximizing the Social  and Emotional Benefits of Arts Education' (Art&Arc 101, here) through the Visual and Performing Arts Education program within the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture.
• Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre, which serves the entire Southern CA region, is offering a workshop of UCLArts & Healing's nationally known program, Beat the Odds: Social and Emotional Skill Building Delivered in a Framework of rumming,
  to follow their assembly entitled, "Drummin' Up Peace," on conflict management.
• A local municipal connection is applying for a State of California Department of Education grant to bring various UCLArts & Healing programs to youth and families in its new comprehensive health and resource center for underserved populations.
• An active collaboration with the Jewish Family Service in which the agency sets up the UCLArts & Healing program and offers it in another part of Los Angeles, with the JFS covering all costs.

 

UCLArts and Healing "facilitates the use of the arts for mind/body wellness and healing in the community, as a vehicle for empowerment and transformation."

Comment: The arts-healing and integrative health and medicine movements are not typically considered in the same breath. Yet philosophically, the whole person, body-and-mind approaches tend to be fully aligned. I thank colleague Lucy Gonda for the contact - a decade ago - to this leading-edge organization for which I serve as chair of the board of directors.

Chiropractors form Consortium of Evidence-Informed Practice Educators; LeFebre named to head

All 16 chiropractic colleges have signed on to participate in a new initiative entitled the Consortium of Evidence-Informed Practice Educators according to this release. The initiative, led by Ron LeFebre, MA, DC, from the University of Western States, is to "provide leadership, training, and support to those chiropractic institutions and educators dedicated to preparing their learners with the skills, knowledge and attitudes which are necessary to deliver evidenced-informed health care." In addition, "the consortium offers a framework for inter-collegiate cooperation, scholarship, and the dissemination of information.” The organization’s website is in the works.

Comment: This initiative grew out of the so-called “reverse R-25” education grants from the NIH NCCAM that were established to help imbed evidence informed curricula in the so-called "CAM" schools. This initiative runs parallel to that of the Project to Enhance Research Literacy, led by Deborah Hill, MS, at the Center for Optimal Integration: Creating Health. (More soon on this initiative, with which I am involved.) Notably, comfort with, and competency around, evidence is core to Competency #5 of the multidisciplinary Competencies for Optimal Practice in Integrated Environments.

$5.5-million grant to bring Vanderbilt into the family of Osher-funded integrative medicine centers; Northwestern to follow

An April 9, 2014 release has announced that Vanderbilt's Center for Integrative Health is now the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University. The announcement followed a $5.5 million donation from philanthropist Bernard Osher. The grant was given through the Bernard Osher Foundation and connects Vanderbilt with three existing Osher Centers for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Harvard Medical School with a clinical program at Brigham and Women's Hospital and at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The release notes that the integrative medicine program at Northwestern University in Chicago also is becoming an Osher Center.

Comment: Power-up! The 4 locations will create a nice W, E, S, N grid of Osher connectivity in the US - UCSF-Harvard, Vanderbilt-Northwestern – with an anchor at the home of the Nobel.

Early notice: July 2015 conference on the "Process of Integrating Evidence (PIE) for CAM Educators" 

A multidisciplinary group of educators and researchers, led by Cyndy Long, MS, PhD, from Palmer College, is developing a conference entitled "Process of Integrating Evidence (PIE) for CAM Educators" that will be held on the Palmer College of Chiropractic campus in Davenport, IA, July 9-11, 2015. Among those involved are Beau Anderson, PhD, LAc, a leading researcher-educator at Pacific College Oriental Medicine, Ron LeFebre, MA, DC, from the University of Western States, and Deborah Hill, M.S., project manager for the Project to Enhance Research Literacy at the Center for Optimal Integration: Creating Health.

Comment: I like the title although I would guess that taking a slice of this is hardly the first choice of PIE for many integrative health educators. What this PERL group discussion shows is that taking a bite of this is to invite as much cultural change inside these institutions as insertion of integrative health and medicine asks of regular payment and delivery institutions.