Five years ago, Emeran A. Mayer and Bruce Naliboff first proposed the development of a UCLA Center for Integrative Medicine. Their vision for such a center was born from the observation that patients, who were not adequately helped by western biomedical approaches, could find relief from unconventional therapies, including self-help techniques to reduce stress responses. Meanwhile, western medicine was beginning to yield scientific evidence demonstrating the convergence between ancient and modern medical perspectives on health and illness. Skyrocketing health care costs were contributing to the inaccessibility of health care, and dissatisfaction with standard medical treatment was driving patients to seek alternative forms of therapy, without information as to their effectiveness or safety. Dr. Mayer saw all of this as a mandate for developing cost-effective, integrative approaches to the practice of medicine. He also saw an opportunity for UCLA, with its prominence as a research institution and medical center, to take a leadership role in this effort.

In Fall 2001, Dr. Mayer's dream became a reality. Under the leadership of Drs. Mayer and Naliboff, and in close collaboration with Dr. Michael Irwin, The UCLA Center for Integrative Medicine (CIM) was established with start-up funding from the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. The UCLA CIM is dedicated to the practice, teaching, and science of mind-body, complementary, and alternative medicine at UCLA. Its primary mission is to foster cutting-edge research and training in all aspects of integrative medicine and to establish UCLA as a national leader in developing new, cost-effective models of integrative medical care.

The UCLA CIM has established a network of "senior" faculty who have interest or expertise in integrative medicine. They represent a broad range of medical divisions and departments, including cardiology, digestive diseases, general internal medicine and human services research, clinical immunology and allergy, microbiology and immunology, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, anesthesiology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, and psychology. They also represent all four schools within the UCLA Center for Health Sciences - Dentistry, Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health. In addition to a considerable number of individuals and programs, the core programs/centers within the UCLA CIM are the CURE Neuroenteric Disease Program (E. Mayer, Director), the UCLA Norman Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology (M. Irwin, Director), the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine (Ka-Kit Hui, Director) and the UCLA Center for Nutrition (D. Heber, Director). These liaisons provide the critical ingredients necessary to precipitate innovative research and training in integrative medicine.

Since its inception, the UCLA CIM has spearheaded a popular, cutting-edge lecture series in integrative medicine for the campus academic community and sophisticated lay public. This May's seminar included a lecture on "Navajo Medicine: Healing the Whole Person," which was followed by a demonstration of a modern Qi Gong (Chinese energetic) healing technique. Upcoming lectures include "Gut Reactions to Stress" (June 24) and "The Pain is Mainly in Your Brain" (November 12).
In April of this year, the UCLA CIM co-hosted, with the Emory University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, a "think tank" conference in Sedona, Arizona on nurturing and aversive early life influences on behavior, emotions, health, and disease. The conference was modeled after a similar one, co-sponsored by the UCLA/CURE/Neuroenteric Disease Program and Harvard Medical School Department of Neurology, that brought together leading theoreticians in neuroscience, practitioners of different forms of mind-body medicine, and representatives of ancient healing traditions. This resulted in the seminal publication, The Biological Basis for Mind Body Interactions in the "Progress in Brain Research" series (Emeran A. Mayer, M.D. and Clifford B. Saper, M.D., Eds.).

The UCLA CIM will hold its first annual campus conference entitled, "Models of Integrative Medicine at UCLA: Research, Training, and Clinical Perspectives," on September 27, 2002 for scientists, health care professionals, and students from UCLA and the surrounding community. The UCLA CIM has also arranged to contribute a regular column on integrative medicine to the widely-read magazine of the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders. Recently, the UCLA CIM submitted an application in conjunction with the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition (David Heber, M.D., Ph.D., Director) for the funding of a grant for training medical professionals in "Botanical Dietary Supplements and Integrative Medicine." The UCLA CIM is planning more in-depth programs targeted at educating health care professionals in integrative medicine approaches, maximizing the usefulness of its website in resource networking for scientists as well as the lay public, and developing a community support group that will assist in disseminating information and fundraising.

For more information about the UCLA CIM activities and lecture series updates, please see its website at www.uclamindbody.org