FACULTY DIRECTORS

The fellowship program is led by Dr. Phillips as Director, Dr. Eisenberg as Co-Director, Dr. Roger Davis as Associate Director, and by a Steering Committee which includes a representative of each institution as well as Drs. Ted Kaptchuk, Julie Buring and Steven Schachter from the Division. Dr. Eisenberg and Dr. Phillips work closely together in the areas of recruitment, fellow selection and evaluation, fellowship teaching, and selection of fellows’ research projects. Dr. Davis serves as each fellow’s course advisor at HSPH. Other core faculty members for the fellowship participate in many of these activities. The Steering Committee meets at quarterly intervals to review fellowship recruitment, to select applicants and to review and evaluate the core curriculum, the elective curriculum, the research mentorship, and progress of the trainees.

Russell Phillips, M.D. Dr. Phillips is Professor of Medicine at HMS and Chief of the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC. He is a general internist and clinical epidemiologist with extensive research experience. He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford Medical School, and completed his residency at Beth Israel Hospital. He completed a fellowship in general medicine in the HMS program, and became a co-director of the HMS general medicine program in 1990. He became the director of the HMS General Medicine Fellowship Program and the HMS CAM Fellowship Program in 1999. He provides general oversight to both programs and leads them in areas of fellow recruitment, selection and evaluation. In 2001 he was awarded a K24 Mid-Career Patient-Oriented Research Mentorship Award from NCCAM to support his time training fellows and faculty in CAM which was extended in 2006. In 2002, he became Division Chief in General Medicine and Primary Care. Dr. Phillips’ research interests include patient safety and quality of care, end-of-life care, and the epidemiology and efficacy of complementary medicine. He has served as primary mentor to more than 35 trainees, and nearly all have gone on to successful and rewarding careers in academic medicine. In 1999 Dr. Phillips received the A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award from HMS. He has served as primary mentor to all the fellows in the NCCAM-funded T32 training program. Dr. Phillips devotes up to 40% of his effort to this program, providing coordination for the program as a whole and oversight of fellows, using support from his Mid-Career Investigator Award.

David Eisenberg, M.D. Dr. Eisenberg is the Bernard Osher Associate Professor of Medicine at HMS and Director of the HMS Division and its associated Osher Research Center. He has served as an advisor to the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine, the Food and Drug Administration, the Board of Registration in Medicine for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Federation of State Licensing Boards, and is currently a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Special Committee on the Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine by the American Public. Dr. Eisenberg’s research interests have included the epidemiology of CAM use in the United States; the evaluation of chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, tai chi, and meditation in the treatment of acute and chronic low back pain; the development of a model integrative care clinical facility within an academic teaching hospital; legal, medical, and ethical issues pertaining to the delivery of CAM; and a variety of educational programs focused on CAM. He directs, with Dr. Kaptchuk, HMS’s fourth year student CAM course; the required CAM tutorial for third-year medical students; and four approved CME CAM courses. Dr. Eisenberg devotes up to 10% of his time to the fellowship training program and serves as its co-director.

Roger Davis, Sc.D. is the principal biostatistician for the HMS Division and the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC. He holds appointments as Associate Professor of Medicine (Biostatistics), HMS, and Associate Professor of Biostatistics, HSPH. Dr. Davis has extensive experience collaborating on clinical trials, health services research and clinical epidemiology projects. He has been the biostatistician involved with all of our NIH applications and related publications authored by Drs. Eisenberg, Kaptchuk, Phillips and other core faculty of the Division. He works closely with fellows on the design and analysis of their projects and serves as an academic advisor to students in the Program in Clinical Effectiveness (see below). He will devote up to 10% of his time to the fellowship program and will serve as the associate director with responsibility for evaluating applicants, providing statistical support to fellows, and serving as course advisor for fellow’ academic work at HSPH. Dr. Davis receives support from Dr. Phillips’ K24 award from NCCAM to support a portion of his time working with the CAM fellows and to serve as the associate director of the fellowship program.

Julie Buring, ScD. is Professor of Ambulatory Care and Prevention at HMS; Deputy Director of the Division of Preventive Medicine at BWH; and Director of Research for the Division. Dr. Buring also serves as Chair of the institutional review board (IRB) at HMS. Her primary research focus is on the epidemiology of chronic disease, primarily cancer and cardiovascular disease, especially in women. Dr. Buring is currently principal investigator or co-principal investigator of four large-scale randomized trials: the Women’s Health Study; the Women’s Antioxidant Cardiovascular Study; Physicians’ Health Study II; and BWH’s Vanguard Center of the Women’s Health Initiative. She is also actively involved in teaching and training, serving as the director of the core course in epidemiology for non-epidemiologists at the HSPH; main lecturer in a required HMS course in clinical epidemiology; and the director and co-director of two NIH-funded T32 training grants in the epidemiology of aging and cardiovascular disease, respectively.

Ted Kaptchuk, O.M.D., a licensed acupuncturist, is Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS and the director of the Division’s program in complementary medicine specialties. He has served on the faculty of the NESA, is a consultant to the Board of Registration in Medicine, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and served on the advisory panel to the NIH Conference on Acupuncture. He is currently a member of the NIH NCCAM Advisory Council. His research interests are in the safety and efficacy of CAM, the placebo response, and the ethical implications of CAM practices and research for both conventional and non-conventional providers. He is the principal investigator of two RO1 grants from NCCAM and is recognized internationally for his placebo research. Dr. Kaptchuk co-directs, with Dr. Eisenberg, two HMS CAM courses for students. He directs clinical conferences for fellows, and serves as a research mentor, with emphasis on placebo issues and acupuncture.

Steven Schachter, M.D. is Professor of Neurology, HMS, and Associate Director, Clinical Research, for the Division. While Dr. Schachter’s research has focused on treatments for epilepsy, he has broad experience in the design and management of clinical trials, having been principal investigator on over 70 clinical trials, including studies funded by NIH and industry. He was the medical director of the BIDMC Office of Clinical Trials Research which assisted institutional investigators with study design, budgeting, and regulatory issues; he is currently the vice chair of the Continuing Review Committee for the BIDMC IRB. In 2000-01, Dr. Schachter was Vice President of Education at the Harvard Clinical Research Institute, and in this role helped to develop CME materials on regulatory aspects of clinical research and the responsible conduct of science. He is involved in clinical research education as the co-director of the Longitudinal Seminar class, part of the Scholars in Clinical Science Program, a two-year master's degree program through HMS.

Peter Wayne, Ph.D. was the first Director of Research at NESA and is now Director of Tai Chi Research for the Division. He continues as Adjunct Faculty Assistant Professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professionals. Dr. Wayne received his PhD in Biology from Harvard University, where he spent 15 years conducting research on the topics of climate change, plant physiology and evolutionary ecology. He founded and currently directs the oriental medicine research program at NESA. Since taking the position at NESA in March 2000, Dr. Wayne has developed substantial experience and skills in the design and management of CAM trials. Dr. Wayne is currently the principal investigator on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) that investigates the benefits of acupuncture for chronic stroke patients. Working in close collaboration with HMS faculty, this interdisciplinary study employs state-of-the-art, human motion analysis neuroscanning to evaluate acupuncture’s efficacy and mechanisms. Dr. Wayne is also co-investigator on a number of other acupuncture and CAM studies, and oversees the participation of NESA faculty in seven ongoing studies, five of which are funded by NIH. Dr. Wayne has 25 years of training experience in the oriental arts of Tai Chi and Qigong, and is a nationally recognized teacher of these practices.

ADDITIONAL FACULTY

Joseph Audette, M.D. is an instructor at HMS. He earned his medical degree at HMS in 1991, completed a residency in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R) at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York in 1995 and is board certified in PM&R and pain management. In addition, he trained in acupuncture at the Tristate School of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture. Dr. Audette is currently the Director of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital’s Outpatient Pain Services and the medical director of the Division’s ICC. He has lectured extensively on topics including myofascial pain , pain rehabilitation, and acupuncture. His clinical and research interests include myofascial pain, chronic pain, Tai chi and acupuncture. He mentored one of our fellows, Dr. Gloria Yeh, on an evaluation of a training program in medical acupuncture. He has also developed and directs the HMS CME course on Clinical Acupuncture for Physicians with Kiiko Matsumoto, LicAc and David Euler, Lic. Ac.

Ben Benjamin, Ph.D. holds a Ph.D. in Sports Medicine and Education and is the founder and President of the Muscular Therapy Institute (MTI) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is the author of many articles on working with injuries and chronic pain as well as the widely used books in the field, Are You Tense?, Exercise Without Injury and Listen To Your Pain: Understanding, Identifying and Treating Pain and Injury Problems, and is co-author of The Ethics of Touch. He has studied with the British physician, James Cyriax, M.D., widely known for his pioneering work in orthopedic medicine. Dr. Benjamin has been in private practice for over 40 years and has published regularly in the Massage Therapy Journal since 1986. He also headed the Muscular Therapy Department at Spectrum Medical Arts, a complementary medical clinic in Arlington, MA for five years and has served as a faculty member for the HMS CME course on CAM.

Michael Cohen, J.D., M.B.A., M.F.A. is Director of Legal Programs at the HMS Division and a Lecturer in Medicine in the Department of Medicine at HMS. He is the author of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Legal Boundaries and Regulatory Perspectives (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) and Beyond Complementary Medicine: Legal and Ethical Perspectives on Health Care and Human Evolution (University of Michigan Press, 2000). His research interests include institutional policies related to credentialing and liability for CAM therapies, and herbs and dietary supplement use.

Maureen Connelly, M.D., M.P.H. is a clinical investigator and general internist in the DACP of HMS and HPHC and Instructor in Ambulatory Care and Prevention at HMS. She completed her Master of Public Health degree at HSPH as part of a general internal medicine fellowship at BWH. She practices primary care medicine with Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates (HVMA), a multi-specialty group practice serving 250,000 patients in eastern Massachusetts, and is the co-director of the HVMA Menopause Consultation Service, an inter-disciplinary specialty referral service for menopausal women. Dr. Connelly’s primary areas of investigation include patterns of hormone replacement therapy use, patient decision-making about hormone replacement therapy, and the evaluation of decision support and disease management programs for menopausal women. Her studies of menopausal women’s health have included collaboration with faculty of the HMS Division to evaluate the effect of botanical therapies for menopausal symptoms. She is a co-investigator with Dr. Eisenberg on two NIH studies of CAM therapies for back pain. She has worked with one of our fellows, Dr. Anne McCaffrey, on a project on CAM therapies for menopausal symptoms.

Mary Beth Hamel, M.D. is a general internist in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS. She is a primary care physician and researcher. Her research focuses on decision-making, clinical outcomes, and costs of care for elderly patients. She has mentored fellows and junior faculty on research projects in the areas of end-of-life care, osteoporosis, geriatric oncology, CAM therapy use by the elderly, differences in use between older and younger patients, and decision and cost-effectiveness analyses. In addition to her work as a researcher and clinician, Dr. Hamel serves as Deputy Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Ellen Silver Highfield, Lic. Ac. is a 1982 graduate of the New England School of Acupuncture (NESA), and has a diplomate from the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. Ms. Highfield is a faculty member at NESA , a researcher for the Division and is an Associate in Pediatrics at HMS. In addition to her private practice, Ms. Highfield is the director of the acupuncture program in the Center for Holistic Pediatric Education and Research at Children’s Hospital (CH), Boston and a staff acupuncturist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). Ms. Highfield has served as a faculty member in several HMS CME courses on CAM.

Michelle Holmes, MD, MPH, DrPH. In 2002, Dr. Michelle Holmes was at the center of several important studies in the area of lifestyle factors and cancer risk - findings that will most likely impact how cancer risk is evaluated and steps women can take to reduce their risk. Dr. Holmes is based at Brigham and Women's Channing Laboratory and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. She was the lead author of study findings that revealed how certain lifestyle choices - such as milk consumption, HRT and pregnancy - can impact a woman's risk of certain cancers. Dr. Holmes and her research team released two related findings from the Nurses’ Health Study at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The studies found that specific lifestyle factors such as a woman's history of pregnancy, use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and diet may influence blood levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a hormone linked to increased risk of cancer. These studies may help explain the mechanisms of cancer growth and formation, suggesting ways women can modify their lifestyle that may decrease cancer risk.

Janet Kahn, Ph.D. is a massage therapist and a sociologist. She has been a research scientist at American Institutes for Research in Cambridge and the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College. From 1996-2000 she served as president of the American Massage Therapy Association Foundation. She is currently a partner in Integrative Consulting, a research and organizational consulting firm in Burlington, Vermont. She is also president of Peace Village Projects, a non-profit organization that has brought trauma-relieving bodywork to children in war-torn areas, and is now conducting a national youth dialogue on peace and violence, and believes the lessons of working in conflict situations can be helpful to the field of integrative medicine. Dr. Kahn is a member of the National Advisory Council of NCCAM and is a co-investigator on several NIH-funded studies of CAM therapies for low back pain with Dr. Eisenberg and Dr. Daniel Cherkin.

Matthew Kowalski, D.C. is a 1990 graduate of the National College of Chiropractic. He also completed a 2-year multidisciplinary residency in orthopedics leading to certification with the American Board of Chiropractic Orthopedics. Currently, Dr. Kowalski maintains a private chiropractic practice in Holbrook, MA and an interdisciplinary practice at HealthSouth Braintree Rehabilitation Hospital, where he first introduced chiropractic into a New England hospital. He is an instructor in the physical therapy program at Boston University, a postgraduate lecturer for courses in orthopedics for the National University of Health Sciences, and a co-investigator on Dr. Eisenberg’s NCCAM grant to develop a model integrative care center.

Elvira Lang, M.D. received training in radiology and interventional radiology at the University of Heildelberg, Germany, where she served on the faculty. After her move to the United States, she undertook a second residency in radiology at the University of California, San Diego, and a fellowship at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology in St. Louis. She joined the faculty at Stanford University and headed the interventional section at the VA Medical Center in Palo Alto for five years. She then directed the Section of Cardiovascular/ Interventional Radiology at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa, before joining the BIDMC as Chief of Interventional Radiology in November 1998. She has a solid foundation in NIH-funded laboratory and clinically-oriented research. Her research interests are directed toward non-pharmacologic analgesia methods, using self-hypnotic relaxation and distraction directly in the procedure room. She is supported by a K24 mid-career investigator award from NCCAM.

Helene Langevin, MD. Dr. Langevin is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Vermont. She completed her training at McGill University in 1978 and her residency and fellowship at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1986. The research interests of her laboratory are the mechanism of action of acupuncture, and the interaction between connective tissue and sensory nervous system. She is currently investigating the hypothesis that transduction of this mechanical signal to a cellular response underlies some of the therapeutic effects of acupuncture. Her long-term goal is to understand how the effect of mechanical forces on connective tissue matrix composition may influence sensory afferent input originating from that connective tissue. Understanding these interactions may give important insights into the pathogenesis of musculoskeletal pain.

Yue-Wei (David) Lee, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, HMS and the director of the Bio-Organic and Natural Product Laboratory, McLean Hospital. Dr. Lee has extensive experience working with natural products and specifically Chinese medicinal plants. He has successfully isolated bioactive compounds from a number of herbal medicines including Boswellia carterii (for prostate cancer treatment) and has received multiple NIH grants in the area of herbal medicine research.

Anna Legedza, Sc.D. is a biostatistician in the Division and the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC and Instructor in Medicine at HMS. She joined the HMS faculty in 2001 after completing her doctorate and a post-doctoral fellowship at HSPH. She has served as protocol statistician on NIH-funded clinical trials conducted at the Division including studies of acute low back pain, repetitive stress injury and irritable bowel syndrome.

Donald Levy, M.D. is a board-certified internist who received his MD from New York Medical College and completed his residency at Mt. Auburn Hospital in 1984. He is the director of Integrative Medical Education at Mt. Auburn Hospital. Dr. Levy served as the medical director of the Marino Center during which time he helped the Center to expand its multidisciplinary team of practitioners and to ally itself with local academic medical centers, hospitals, and research organizations. He supervises the fellows’ clinical work at the Marino Center.

Weidong Lu, Lic.Ac., M.P.H. recently received his Master of Public Health degree from HSPH. He is a faculty member and pharmacy director at NESA, chairman of NESA’s Herbal Studies Department, and the vice-chairman of the Massachusetts Committee on Acupuncture, which oversees state licensing. He has been a consultant to the Division’s studies investigating CAM therapies for back pain, as well as the grant to develop the model integrative care center. In addition, he is the acupuncturist and researcher at DFCI’s Zakim Center for Complementary Care and has served as a faculty member at several of the Division’s continuing medical education courses.

Ellen McCarthy, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS and is an epidemiologist with extensive experience using national administrative and survey databases to study policy relevant questions. She has successfully mentored many fellows using large public use databases and the national surveys of CAM use performed by Division faculty. Dr. McCarthy will devote her time to the program developing and implementing curriculum on public use databases and mentoring.

Murray Mittleman, MD, MPH is the Director of Cardiovascular Epidemiology in the Cardiovascular Division of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he also practices preventive cardiology. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. He also holds a joint appointment in the Occupational Health Program in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mittleman currently teaches three graduate level intermediate and advanced courses in epidemiologic methods at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Mittleman is the principal investigator of several ongoing case-crossover and cohort studies evaluating factors that trigger the onset of acute cardiovascular events and determine the prognosis of patients with acute myocardial infarction. He also conducts randomized clinical trials of dietary interventions/supplements on cardiovascular risk factors and atherosclerosis progression.

Andrew Nierenberg, M.D.is a graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York. He did his residency in psychiatry at New York University/Bellevue Hospital in New York City. Dr. Nierenberg then joined the Department of Psychiatry at MGH in Boston where he is currently the associate director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program and the medical director of the Bipolar Programs, as well as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at HMS. In 2000, he was awarded the NDMDA Gerald L. Klerman Young Investigator Award and a NARSAD Independent Investigator Award. Dr. Nierenberg is currently involved in both the Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD) and the Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STR*D) NIHM contracts, two unprecedented clinical trials that will include thousands of patients with mood disorders. He is also the principal investigator for a 3-site NIHM/NCCAM study of St. John’s Wort for Minor Depression.

Bonnie O’Connor, Ph.D. is Associate Professor (Research) in the Department of Pediatrics at Rhode Island Hospital/Brown Medical School, the co-director of the HRSA-funded Brown University Faculty Development in Pediatrics (BUFDIP) program, and the co-PI on a HRSA training grant Fellowship Program in General Pediatrics, for which she developed the curricula in cultural competence, complementary/alternative medicine (CAM), and bioethics. She has been a medical educator for twelve years, with teaching and curriculum development experience ranging across the spectrum of medical education from first year medical school to residency, fellowship, and CME courses. Dr. O’Connor received her doctoral training and degree from the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has included focused studies of specific cases of ethnic culture and belief conflict with conventional biomedicine. Dr. O’Connor has been an advisor, committee member, and/or consultant on various aspects of CAM for NCCAM and Health Canada. Dr. O’Connor regularly conducts training sessions in her specialty areas for a wide variety of health professionals, and is a frequent presenter at professional conferences.

Diana Post, M.D. is a rheumatologist and primary care physician at BWH, the director of the Spine Unit at HVMA, West Roxbury, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at HMS. In addition, she is a co-investigator of several NIH-funded studies of the Division that examine CAM therapies for low back pain. She is also involved in the design of an electronic medical record for the model ICC, to include many different CAM, as well as conventional, providers.

Rosa Schnyer, Lic. Ac. has for the past ten years participated as co-principal investigator in numerous NIH-funded trials including “Acupuncture in the Treatment of Depression,” and “Acupuncture in the Treatment of Hot Flashes during Menopause;” and as co-investigator in various other acupuncture trials (spasticity in children with cerebral palsy; chronic phase of stroke, repetitive stress injury, irritable bowel syndrome and depression in bipolar disorder). As part of her research, Ms. Schnyer has been working to develop appropriate acupuncture research methodology, including a manualized approach to the design and implementation of protocols in clinical trials of acupuncture and the various assessment questionnaires.

William Taylor, M.D. is Associate Professor of Medicine at HMS. He is a clinician and teacher in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC, and Associate Master of the W.B. Castle Society at HMS. He is extensively involved in medical education, and has been a leader in teaching faculty to teach for over a decade. Dr. Taylor has served as faculty coordinator for the prevention theme in the HMS curriculum; senior fellow involved in faculty development in “Patient/Doctor I,” the first-year course on medical interviewing; acting director of the required second-year course in preventive medicine and nutrition; and course director for a one-year pilot course in critical reading of the medical literature. He runs prevention and clinical epidemiology seminars in the residency programs in medicine at BIDMC and in the HPHC-BWH primary care residency in which his primary responsibility is teaching residents how to teach these topics. He advises fellows on educational activities.

W. Allan Walker, M.D. Dr. Walker is the Conrad Taff Professor of Pediatrics and Nutrition, HMS, the director of the Harvard Clinical Nutrition Research Center, and the chairman of the HMS Division of Nutrition. Dr. Walker’s primary research interest is the study of immune function in the gut; his recent studies have focused on the development, ontogeny and function of fetal enterocytes. He has studied the development of intestinal hydrolase activity, shown that inflammation in the developing intestine is a possible pathophysiologic contributor to necrotizing enterocolitis and recently determined the ontogeny of alpha 2.6 sialotransferase during normal maturation in the rat intestine. His studies have contributed to a greater understanding of the function of GTP binding subunits for adenylate cyclase in the small intestine, and the effects of exogenous nucleotides on the proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis rates of human small intestinal epithelium.

Alan Woolf, MD., MPH. Dr. Woolf is Director of the Program in Environmental Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on the reduction of childhood injuries due to exposure to toxic substances, including overdoses and adverse interactions of dietary supplements. Dr. Woolf received his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed an internship, residency, and postgraduate fellowship at Duke University. He received an MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.