News

News

Osher Collaborative 2018 Annual Meeting
(Stockholm, Sweden)

The 2018 Annual Meeting of the Osher Collaborative was hosted by the Karolinska Institutet Osher Center in Stockholm, Sweden. In attendance were core leaders from each of the seven Osher Centers for Integrative Medicine, including members from our newest Osher Center at University of Washington. The Osher Collaborative members were joined by Bernard Osher, Barbro Osher, and Mary Bitterman, of The Bernard Osher Foundation.

News Harvard University

Call for Applications
Research Fellowship in Integrative Medicine - Harvard Medical School

The Harvard Medical School Research Fellowship in Integrative Medicine is a NIH-funded three year joint program of Harvard Medical School-affiliated teaching hospitals. The program accepts postdoctoral candidates including physicians, anthropologists, health behaviorists, sociologists, psychologists and integrative medicine (IM) providers with doctoral degrees who are interested in research training towards academic careers in integrative medicine.

News Northwestern University

Northwestern Osher Center Receives Community-Engaged Research Partnership Award
Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities

2018 Award Winner: Cooking Up Health: Docs & Kids in the Kitchen

In 2016, an Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities (ARCC) seed grant award enabled the strong partnership foundation to address childhood obesity issues and foster the development of a sustainable program for the delivery of cooking and nutrition education in the community by future physicians. The unique Cooking Up Health is an elective course at Feinberg which teaches medical students about nutrition through the lens of culinary medicine and community health and hands-on cooking. The medical students then deliver the healthy habit messages to Chicago Public Schools elementary school students in underserved communities. 

How personal experience as a racial minority led to a career studying compassion meditation in diverse populations
Mind & Life Institute Interview with Helen Weng (UCSF Osher Center)

An Interview with Mind & Life Fellow, Helen Weng, PhD.

Helen is interested in how contemplative practices can improve communication within and between individuals, and how this in turn improves psychological and physical health. Her work is focused on developing a novel fMRI task to measure mindful breath awareness, using community-engaged approaches to adapt fMRI study procedures to underrepresented populations from diverse contemplative communities, and understanding how mindfulness-based interventions impact body awareness and psychophysiological variables.

News Harvard University

Harvard Scientists Ask “What is the Point?” in Challenge to Acupuncture Researchers
JACM Publication by Helene Langevin and Peter Wayne (Harvard Osher Center)

In this provocative JACM article, “What Is the Point? The Problem with Acupuncture Research That No One Wants to Talk About,” Drs. Langevin and Wayne argue that failure to use clear terminology and rigorously investigate the subject of acupuncture points has hindered the growing legitimacy of acupuncture as an evidence-based therapy.

News Vanderbilt University

How Alternative Treatment Helps Chronic Pain, Opioid Addiction
News Channel 5 with Dr. Lindsey McKernan (Vanderbilt Osher Center)

As lawmakers debate on bills that could impact the opioid crisis in Tennessee, people have been looking for alternative treatments to help with chronic pain and, in many cases, addiction. Steve Olson has been taking individual and group clinical hypnosis sessions at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine on West End in Nashville.

News Northwestern University

8 Positive Skills for Stress Relief
Chicago Health Magazine with Judith Moskowitz (Northwestern Osher Center)

Social psychologist Judith Moskowitz, PhD, MPH, director of research at Northwestern Medicine’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, discovered the power of positive emotions 20 years ago when she was researching how men who were caregivers of their partners with HIV — a terminal illness at the time — coped with negative emotions and depression caused by their situation. Surprisingly, the caregivers wondered out loud why they weren’t asked about the positive, meaningful moments they experienced.

News Vanderbilt University

This is Your Brain on Mediation by David Vago
10% Happier with Dan Harris Podcast and Course

There has been an explosion of research in recent years on what meditation does to the brain, but as neuroscientist Dave Vago points out, the science of putting meditation under neuro-imaging is still quite young. Vago, the research director for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, studies brain scans of meditators to analyze changes in brain activity, blood flow, size and function of certain areas in the brain, and he was part of a group of scientists who published paper aiming to define “mindfulness” and its neurological impacts.