Three Schools to Test Alternative Medicine Curriculum

RESTON, Va.

The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) recently selected three medical schools to test a new curriculum designed to integrate complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches into mainstream medical school curricula.

The University of Connecticut School of Medicine, University of Massachusetts School of Medicine and the University of California at Irvine School of Medicine were selected by an expert reviewers' panel on the basis of curriculum design, expertise of teaching faculty and research in CAM, feasibility and creative elements of the approach, as well as commitment by the dean's office and student leadership to support implementation of the CAM curriculum.

The AMSA Educational Development for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (EDCAM) initiative is funded by an education grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicines (NCCAM).

"It is pleasing to see how much the EDCAM initiative has done in just the first six months of the five-year grant," says Dr. Eric Hodgson, president of AMSA. "EDCAM has already created a national integrated curriculum with resources under guidance of an impressive national expert advisory panel, completed a request for proposal process and selected schools to pilot the national curriculum."

The curriculum was designed by an advisory panel of 20 members involved in CAM education and interested in the training of future physicians. Consultants were hired to write modules for integration of CAM into curricula. Each module has 15-20 pages of references and provides structure as well as examples of medical schools around the country that have implemented similar topics into their curricula.

For more information visit <www.amsa.org/humed/cam>.