Our Center

The Osher Center for Integrative Medicine is a collaboration between Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. The administrative offices are housed within the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the clinical team is based at the Osher Clinical Center located at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 850 Boylston Street, Chestnut Hill, Boston, MA.

Mission

The Osher Center is focused on enhancing human health, resilience and quality of life through translational research, clinical practice and education in integrative medicine. We believe that by increasing our fundamental scientific understanding of human health, we are moving toward a new model of wellness and healing.

What is Integrative Medicine?

iceberg We view integrative medicine as more than the sum of conventional and alternative medicine, but also as a path to a deeper understanding of basic physiology, health and disease that underlies both.  A current limitation of conventional medicine is its organization into separate physiological systems, and a consequently fragmented approach to therapeutics.

Our integrative view of health is holistic and emphasizes interconnections between mind and body, and across physiological systems.  We therefore aim to expand our understanding of basic biological processes by which any therapy, alternative or conventional, can impact disease and restore health.

 

A Center ‘Without Walls’

In order to fulfill its mission, the Osher Center has established a “center without walls” consisting of interdisciplinary networks in translational research, medical education, and clinical care across the Harvard Medical School (HMS), with additional ties to the Osher Centers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the Karolinska Institute, Vanderbilt University, and Northwestern University.

History

The Osher Center at HMS was created in 2001, with support from the Bernard Osher Foundation. Under the leadership of its founding Director, Dr. David Eisenberg, early successes included the publication of seminal papers on the prevalence and patterns of use of alternative medicine in the United States.

In 2010, the Osher Center underwent a restructuring that disseminated its academic effort broadly across the HMS community while maintaining its clinical activities at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.  Under the leadership of Dr. Helene Langevin since 2012, the Osher Center has fostered an expanding academic and clinical network connecting the Boston integrative medicine community.

The Osher Collaborative

The Osher Center at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital is one of six international academic Centers funded by The Bernard Osher Foundation. Together the centers comprise the Osher Collaborative for Integrative Medicine, which amplifies the impact of each center to to study, teach, and practice integrative medicine.