ACADEMIC CONSORTIUM

Harvard Medical School, through its Division for Research and Education in Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies, is one of the charter members of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine (CAHCIM).

The Consortium’s mission is to help transform medicine and healthcare through rigorous scientific studies, new models of clinical care, and innovative educational programs that integrate biomedicine, the complexity of human beings, the intrinsic nature of healing and the rich diversity of therapeutic systems.

This consortium, made up of 25 medical schools in the United States and Canada, is committed to sharing information and ideas, meeting challenges together in a process grounded in the values of a practice of medicine described by the term 'Integrative', supporting member institutions, and providing feedback on national research priorities, cost-effectiveness and clinical efficacy initiatives. Given the involvement of these strong academic institutions and their representatives, which include deans and chancellors, the Consortium is poised to provide a forum for those committed to the values of integrative medicine, provide necessary cohesion to maximize individual institutional efforts, and also move the field forward in a way that no one institution is able to.

The consortium recently published its first joint paper on education:

Education Working Group, Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine. Core competencies in integrative medicine for medical school curricula: a proposal. Acad Med. 2004 Jun;79(6):521-31. [Beth Israel Center for Health and Healing, New York, NY 10016, USA]