Mentoring and Research in Integrative Medicine

项目总结

PROJECT SUMMARY This is a proposed renewal of a highly successful K24 award for Dr. Frederick Hecht, Professor of Medicine at the University of California (UCSF), and director of research at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Hecht is an internist with postdoctoral training in clinical epidemiology, who is a leader in research on mindfulness-based interventions and health. He directs the T32-funded UCSF Training in Research in Integrative Medicine (TRIM) fellowship program, and is principal investigator for two NCCIH research grants. He has mentored more than 40 postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty and published over 200 peer-reviewed articles. In the initial K24 period, Dr. Hecht has mentored 12 pre/postdoctoral fellows and 10 junior faculty on K awards. With this K24 renewal, Dr. Hecht aims to mentor at least four postdoctoral and two predoctoral fellows each year, and four to six junior faculty with K awards. He will further develop his research and mentoring capabilities with advanced seminars on research design and biostatistics. UCSF provides an extremely rich and supportive scientific environment for Dr. Hecht's research and that of his mentees, including an outstanding NIH funded CTSA, which is closely integrated with Dr. Hecht's K24 plans. The specific research aims of Dr. Hecht's research program are to: (1) develop and test innovative applications of mindfulness-based interventions and tools for studying the active components of these interventions, (2) assess the mechanisms of action of integrative medicine therapies, and (3) test the benefits of integrative medicine therapies such as acupuncture/acupressure and yoga in decreasing pain and improving symptom management. In this K-24 renewal, Dr. Hecht will continue to focus his research and mentoring on some of our most important chronic health problems, including obesity, pain, and diabetes, applying innovative methodological approaches such as adaptive interventions to optimize integrative medicine based interventions for treatment and prevention of these conditions. With this renewal, he aims to continue providing mentoring and a research environment to develop an exceptionally strong and diverse group of researchers who will play leading roles in the future of integrative medicine research.