Your Support Will Make a Difference!
Dear Friends,
You will likely receive many worthy requests for your support. We ask you to please include the Osher Center for Integrative Health among your organizations of choice.
Why do we need your support?
To Help Generate Inner Resilience and Outer Fortitude
Whole Person Health embraces our physical, psychological and social wellbeing. We are truly interconnected, and our personal health is intimately entwined with the local and global public health, environmental and socio-economic influences of our times.
At the heart of Whole Person Health is the investigation and integration of the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that sustain us and promote our individual and collective wellbeing. Staying healthy and grounded in ourselves and being able to respond constructively to our immediate and far-reaching challenges takes inner resilience and enduring faith in our capacity to create a better future.
The Osher Center for Integrative Health delivers innovative and rigorous integrative medical research at Harvard Medical School, clinical excellence in collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a growing body of trans-disciplinary educational programming. Together, these efforts support our individual and collective potential to live healthier lives and create a more fulfilling future.
Building on 20 years of success, the Osher Center is once again evolving to meet the needs of our patients, providers, researchers and community at large. While remaining committed to our core competencies in mind-body research, integrative clinical care and educating the next generation of healthcare providers, we have expanded our scope of work to include planetary health, nutrition and supplement research and high-tech-soft-touch applied technology for integrative health.
While our team has dedicated our life missions to these efforts, your support can help advance integrative health research and education, clinical care and planetary health.
Please consider supporting one or more of our six areas of impact highlighted below.
In Gratitude,
Peter M. Wayne, PhD
Bernard Osher Associate Professor of Medicine in the Field of Complementary and Integrative Medical Therapies
Director, Osher Center for Integrative Health at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital
P.S. You can send a check if you prefer.
Please visit our donation page at oshercenter.org for details
Support the Osher Clinic
Providing integrative care in an academic medical institution requires research to validate its effectiveness and financial resources to recruit and sustain a high performing team. Our clinical team provides exceptional care for both our patients and our fellow care providers to fortify their resilience and protect against burnout. We also act as a teaching laboratory for the next generation of healthcare providers by providing an interdisciplinary learning environment.
Your contribution will help support research initiatives and create sustainability as we expand our clinical team and provide health educational programs to our patients, institutional employees and the next generation of providers.
“Dr. Kowalski is a professional with broad knowledge of how to handle individual issues. His ability to connect with patients is phenomenal. I always look forward to my visits and know I will feel a hundred times better after my treatment.” – Osher Clinical Center patient
(By choosing our Osher Integrated Care Center Program Fund)
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Support Our Free Programs
Our free programing includes our:
- Monthly Integrative Medicine Grand Rounds
- Signature biennial ‘Network Forum’
- Online interactive research and clinical network maps
- Online multi-disciplinary educational resources; and more.
All these offerings draw from experts in their respective fields. Your support will help us continue providing equitable access to these rich resources to the public and across the integrative medicine community as a whole.
“It has been wonderful to see the growth of the Osher Center under your current leadership structure, and the evolution of vision and purpose. [Osher is] an invaluable resource in our community, and I am grateful for the continuing opportunities that you provide for learning and expansion. Thank you!” – Osher Center Newsletter Reader
(By choosing our Osher Research and Education Initiatives Fund)
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Support Mind-Body Movement Laboratory
Research at our Mind-Body Movement Lab centers around the study of Tai Chi, acupuncture, chiropractic, and related complementary and integrative therapies. These modalities serve the prevention, rehabilitation, and symptom management of chronic health conditions, including:
- Chronic pain
- Fall prevention
- Depression
- Cognitive decline
- Cardiorespiratory disease
- Cancer, and
- Parkinson’s disease.
Your support will help move research forward to benefit patient populations.
“The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi [by Dr. Wayne] is a significant milestone in the integration of Eastern and Western medicine. It deftly summarizes the scientific evidence for the healing potential of this traditional Chinese system of body movement and gives readers practical advice for using it in everyday life.” – Andrew Weil, MD
Support the Tai Chi Mind Body Program
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Support Our Planetary Health Initiatives
Without a healthy planet, we cannot have individual health
Since establishing a Planetary Health leadership role in 2022, we have:
- Funded research in biophilia and loneliness
- Provided Planetary Health leadership across all 11 Osher Centers for Integrative Health
- Presented at national and international conferences elucidating the interconnected nature between self and planet, and
- Published academic papers on the relationship between integrative and planetary health
We’re just getting started! Your support will help us further develop this important new direction and expand our reach and amplify our impact.
“The best way to enhance human health is to champion behaviors that support ecosystem health—on which we, and other species, depend. I cannot imagine a more relevant focus in medicine for the early 21st century than that.” – Osher Planetary Health Survey Respondent
Support Planetary Health Programming
(By choosing the Osher Research and Education Initiatives Fund)
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Support Our Nutrition & Supplement Research Initiatives
“You are what you eat!” Better understanding how nutrition affects us across the whole lifespan has major individual and public health implications. Many of us take dietary supplements – yet research remains particularly sparse in regard to the health benefits we think we get from them. The Osher Center has recently and uniquely positioned itself to lead nutrition and supplement research leveraging large, existing studies and trials of dietary supplements while drawing upon the rich, collaborative resources across the Osher integrative research community.
Your support will:
- Fund our partnership with community-based teaching kitchens to help individuals develop highly integrated dietary-, lifestyle-, mind-, and body-based interventions that leverage our existing research strengths
- Help establish a new SuPplement and Aging Research Center (SPARC) which will focus on research, clinical trials and educational resources for both the integrative health community and the public
Support our Nutrition & Supplement Research Efforts
(By choosing the Osher Research and Education Initiatives Fund)
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Support Our High Tech-Soft-Touch Education & Research
Technology has historically made significant contributions in advancing concepts of wellness and public health science. This has included popularizing wearables to monitor health metrics; the widespread use of meditation apps; and the application of artificial intelligence to big-data to shed light on the prevalence of social isolation, loneliness and mental health. In contrast, it has also increased polarization, heightened stress/anxiety, and exacerbated our disconnection from nature.
The Osher Center can make a meaningful contribution to the integrative medicine field by bringing together technology with our humanity: Being mindful of both the benefits and hazards of technology and helping others navigate and evaluate this complex balancing act.
Your support will help fund the application of novel technologies for Citizens Science, community well-being, planetary health and insight into the therapeutic mechanisms underlying Complementary and Integrative Health practices.
Support High-Tech-Soft-Touch initiatives
(By choosing to the Osher Research and Education Initiatives Fund)