Each year, the Osher Center awards early seed funding to investigators from across Harvard Medical School for innovative projects in the field of integrative medicine including basic, translational, and clinical research. We thank the Bernard Osher Foundation for providing us the means to support and encourage new and innovative research within the Harvard integrative medicine community.
The creativity, quality and collaborative partnerships that emerge out of these pilot projects continues to be rewarding to witness. This year was no different. Each application underwent a formal peer-review process and was ranked for funding priority based on strategic and scientific merit.
We congratulate the following investigators on their respective awards of approximately $40,000 each. The next application round for 2025 awards will open on September.
-
- Elyse Park
-
- Simmie Foster
-
- Andrew Taylor
Elyse Park, PhD, MPH
Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine
Director, MGH Health Promotion and Resiliency Intervention Research Center, Department of Psychiatry and Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School
“Adapting a Psychosocial Mind-Body Resiliency Intervention to Treat Post-Traumatic Stress”
Innovative Study Design: This proposal aims to address a crucial gap in research and a treatment implementation concern: that some symptoms of post-traumatic stress (i.e., PTS) do not meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD and often go untreated yet cause distress and impairment. SMART-3RP offers mind-body skills to facilitate tolerance of distress and has been used with success in populations that are distressed due to severe illness (e.g., cancer) in treatment centers across the country. However, treating PTS requires a novel adaptation of SMART-3RP to a trauma-informed approach. We hypothesize that by integrating Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART-3RP) intervention with elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy for trauma and trauma-sensitive mindfulness, we can offer a scalable, manualized treatment to address PTS symptoms.
Simmie Foster, MD, PhD
Depression and Clinical Research Program, Director,
Lab for Hot and Cool Research
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital,
Harvard Medical School
“Whole-body Cryotherapy for Dysautonomia in Long COVID”
Innovative Study Design: Few scientific studies of deliberate hot and cold exposure exist, particularly for long COVID, an area of vital importance with very limited treatment options, especially treatments that target the underlying dysfunction. This project seeks to develop a framework for understanding the effect of WBC on long COVID symptoms, with an emphasis on individuals with dysautonomia. If successful, we will gain new understanding of how WBC impacts the neuroinflammatory and cardiovascular response in long COVID and set the stage for developing hot and cold exposure protocols that are accessible, scalable, and effective at re-establishing function.
J. Andrew Taylor, PhD
Director, Spaulding Cardiovascular Research Laboratory
Professor, Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Harvard Medical School
“Yoga Breath Training to Improve Cardiorespiratory Synchrony in Spinal Cord Injury”
Innovative Study Design: The proposed research will explore potential mechanisms of yoga breath training that could lead to sustained health benefits in those with spinal cord injury. Our overall hypotheses are that the mechanisms by which regular practice of yoga breathing reduces inefficient breathing patterns is through lower resting respiratory rate and improved pulmonary function and that the mechanisms by which regular practice of yoga breathing improves sleep quality is through improved respiratory muscle function and increased hypercapnic ventilatory response.