Phase 2 Proposal:

Title: Modular Integrative Health Educational Curriculum: Phase 2 Deployment, Testing, Evaluation, and IH Specialties

Leads: Sara Arscott (University of Wisconsin - Madison), Lisa Howard (Osher Collaborative Coordinating Center)

Collaborators: (contributing authors and project support)

• Osher Collaborative Coordinating Center: Lisa Howard, Nico Henderson
• University of Cincinnati: Sian Cotton, PhD, Kelly Lyle, MHA, MS, Meriden McGraw, MPH
• University of California, San Francisco: Anand Dhruva, MD, Shelley Adler, PhD, Yvette Coulter
• Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital: Aterah Nusrat, MSc, DIC, Darshan H. Mehta, MD MPH
• University of Miami: Anisha Durve, D.O.M. A.D.
• Northwestern University: Melinda Ring, MD, Anna Shannahan, MD, Ann Vertovec, MD, Vanessa Hughes
• The University of Utah: Tricia Petzold, MD
• Vanderbilt University: Elizabeth Walsh, PhD, Kathryn Hansen, PhD, APRN, Ruth Wolever, PhD
• The University of Vermont: Christine Vatovec, PhD
• University of Washington: Iman Majd, MD, Debra Bell, MD, Brenda Loew, DAOM
• University of Wisconsin-Madison: Sara Arscott, MS, PhD, David Kiefer, MD, Vincent Minichiello, MD

Significance & Innovation: The virtual, modular, and asynchronous curriculum fills a significant need for introductory Integrative Health (IH) curriculum across the Osher Centers. The curriculum is accessible to all of the Centers and can serve a variety of needs from medical student and resident rotations to allied health professional training and employee onboarding. This innovative Osher IH curriculum provides a unique resource, not currently available through any program.  It maximizes the expertise across the whole of the Osher Collaborative, while minimizing individual center effort. The modular design includes individual 4-hour learning sessions, allows Centers to choose which content best suits the needs of their learners, and benefit from the expertise of the broader Collaborative. It will also serve to continue to position the Osher Collaborative as central player in IH for the emerging leaders in the field as individual trainees at each of our institutions would be exposed to the power of the broader Collaborative earlier in their careers with the program targeted at medical students and residents.

Feasibility: Of the twenty planned modules, 7 are currently completed and in the review/revision phase, with the goal to be ready for test deployment in spring 2025. The remaining 13 modules are in varying stages of development with the goal of completion by the end of this spring, 2025. This funding would contribute uniquely to the program as the effort needs dedicated administrative and program management expertise to streamline the completion of the project. While the program currently has enthusiasm, support and active participation from the 10 US-based Osher Centers, our centers are each so varied in their available effort – we are seeking this centralized support so we are able to make this program available to all centers, regardless of size and available educational resources.

Goals & Timeline:

• Months 1-2: Conduct a needs assessment of all 10 U.S. Osher Center education leads to better understand modules of highest need and plans for local implementation. Evaluate consistency amongst modules. Determine if modifications are necessary. Final review of all original content and modules.
• Months 3-4: Develop protocols, faculty guides and guidance documents for module deployment, learner facilitation, evaluation, and future content development.
• Months 5-8: Beta-testing - deploy and evaluate selected core modules.
• Months 9-10: Based on feedback evaluation, modify modules and/or deployment strategies.
• Months 11-12: Full deployment of learning modules. Develop a plan for on-going administrative support to Centers; and develop a proposal for the process and timeline of improvements and future updates to module content to keep it current.

Impact: Once deployed, this curriculum will significantly impact Integrative Health education at the Osher Centers well beyond the funding period. The curriculum is very versatile and can be easily tailored to each center’s needs and learner audiences. It has the further potential to be developed as an offering for outside academic programs. Even when funding is gone, individual centers could purchase access to our learning management system for $700 per year to retain access to the modules, an affordable ongoing cost for individual centers. 

Collaboration: The curriculum project has been an active collaboration between all 10 U.S. Osher Centers. Collaborators represent a variety of disciplines and career stages. The curriculum currently under development covers a wide variety of introductory IH topics including an Introduction to IH, Mind Body Medicine, Nutrition, Herbal Medicine and Dietary Supplements, Behavioral Change, Ayurveda, Energy Medicine, Planetary Health, Manual Therapies, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, Lifestyle Medicine, and Spirituality. Proposed future modules include Naturopathy & Functional Medicine, Homeopathy, and IH specialties like Integrative Pediatrics.

Estimated Budget Request: ~$40,000

Provide detailed resources and justification for each expense. Include the proposed role and responsibilities for individuals you are requesting salary support for.

Budget Justification:

This project, initially supported by a small grant secured by the Osher Center at Northwestern University, has outgrown the initial funding as the project has grown in size and scope.

The current proposal seeks to add financial support for module authors, which will be supplemented by the remaining funds on the initial grant ($8,000), financial support for one year of Articulate seat licenses(one per Osher Center), support for 0.15 FTE for a project manager, and 0.0625 FTE (2.5 hours/week) of student help. As the complexity of the project has grown, there is distinct need for a centralized project manager to oversee this project phase. This proposal includes specific support for dedicated project management time to ensure project goals are met. The project manager is expected to develop timelines and guidance documents for module consistency, faculty/learner guides, deployment, and evaluation, and ultimately shepherd the project goals through to completion. Sara Arscott has experience project managing over a million dollar clinical trial portfolio, successfully managing oversight of a +500 document resource library, as well as being an experienced project leader - generating enthusiasm, active participation and commitment from busy faculty. The student will assist the project manager with project tasks and administrative needs such as scheduling meetings.

See Budget Spreadsheet for details.

• $13,000: $1,000 per module for 21 total possible modules (plus $8,000 already secured from Weil Grant = $21,000 total for 21 module stipends)
• 17 in production
• 2 awaiting author sign-up
• 2 IH specialties - IH Pediatrics is in the planning stage
• 0.15 FTE of project manager salary + benefits for 1 year (redacted for privacy)
• $7,000: 10 Articulate seats (one per center)
• $2,012: 0.0625 FTE Student Hourly (2.5 hours/wk)
• Total ~ $40,000

Phase 1 Proposal:

Names and Home Osher Centers of Project Leads and Key Team Members:

Sara Arscott (University of Wisconsin - Madison), Lisa Howard (Osher Collaborative Coordinating Center), Melinda Ring (Northwestern University), Anna Shannahan (Northwestern)

Brief Description:
All 10 U.S. Centers across the Osher Collaborative have contributed to the development of an innovative, modular, and flexible Integrative Health (IH) Elective curriculum. The virtual, asynchronous curriculum is planned to be deployed across all of the centers and serve a variety of needs from 2-week medical student electives, resident rotation didactic training, to allied health professional training and employee onboarding. A previous grant award from the Weil Foundation provided financial support for the initial development phase of the first 20 core modules, now nearing completion.  This proposal seeks additional financial support for the review-revision phase that has begun and testing, deployment, and evaluation at selected centers. Additional funding will also support the exciting phase 2 expansion to include specialties like IH Pediatrics. There has been great interest and engagement in creation of this shared educational content and this is an excellent example of successful on-going collaboration across Osher institutions.
Budget Request: $40,000

Project Leads: Heather Christensen 

Key Osher Partners: Sian Cotton (Cincinnati)

Key Team Members: Caroline Gundler & Aaron Marshall

FULL PROPOSAL:

Total Budget Requested: $27,000

In 2024, the University of Vermont (UVM) and our Osher Center launched a Planetary Health initiative, grounded in the understanding that human health and civilization depend on the flourishing and wise stewardship of natural systems.  This proposed program would utilize existing medical center and university campus green spaces and leverage existing partnerships e.g. Burlington Parks Department and Urban Food Forests. This immersive nature education and employee wellness program would engage health-care providers and staff in workshops, nature walks and community service projects to deepen their knowledge and quality of life.  Specific elements would include professional development on topics such as bioregional herbalism and culinary medicine, mapping and enhancing engagement with existing campus gardens and green spaces, practicing safe and sustainable wild-crafting, pharmacology and preparation of nutrient-dense local foods for optimal assimilation and deliciousness, and team-building service projects such as harvesting local elderberries and preparing syrup for food-insecure community members.

Project Lead: Katherine Elmer, M.S. NB-HWC, Health Coach at the UVM Osher Center for Integrative Health, Lecturer II in the UVM Department of Agriculture, Livelihoods and Environment, Founder and Co-director of Spoonful Herbals (501c3 educational nonprofit)

Estimated budget $40,000

Key Team Members:

Christine Vatovec, PhD Planetary Health Lead at the UVM Osher Center for Integrative Health

Dani Bois NB-HWC, Health Coach UVM Medical Center Employee Wellness

Diane Imrie, UVM Medical Center Director of Sustainability

Emily Stone, RD UVM Medical Center Comprehensive Pain Program

Rachel Boyers, UVM Medical Center Gardens for Health Program

Brendan Fisher, UVM Natural Areas Program

Duncan Murdoch, Intervale Center Land Stewardship Coordinator

Meghan O' Daniel, City of Burlington Parks and Recreation

Estimated budget $40,000

This pilot funding supports an educational needs assessment and development of an intensive, experiential Mediterranean diet-focused culinary medicine course in Italy for U.S. healthcare professionals and residents in training. The course would provide CME’s and seeks to inspire and prepare participants to assist their patients with dietary advice, and to even take a step towards their own personal self-care.

Two Osher Centers collaborate, bringing their experiences teaching short-term travel study courses on integrative health abroad in Norway, New Zealand and Iceland (Vermont) and developing integrative nutrition course content and culinary medicine in primary care practice (UW). The needs assessment informs this new course, which may include integrating didactics with local farm visits, market tours, and hands-on cooking workshops. This groundwork is critical to develop the program and to pilot it for feasibility. Ultimately, we hope to create a culinary medicine travel course that is available to all Osher Collaborative Affiliates.

Project Leads: Emily Godfrey MD, MPH, Iman Majd MD, Debra Bell MD (University of Washington (UW))

Key Osher Partners: Karen Westervelt  (Vermont)

Health professional education is rapidly changing with online learning and AI. Nonetheless, the foundation of healing rests on core skills in interpersonal communication that create a sacred space while also empowering patients. Assessment of these core skills are too often assessed subjectively without validated instruments. We proposed to iterate an already-validated health coaching assessment tool that has observable anchors for numerous competencies in interpersonal education. Strong inter-rater reliability exists among faculty within a single program and a new iteration is needed to expand use of the tool. Three Osher Collaborative coach training programs will jointly improve this evidence-based tool to be able to deliver actionable feedback for learners across different training models. Once finalized, the tool will be paired with comprehensive training content to facilitate implementation across other interested programs. In a later project, separate components of the tool can be validated to assess interpersonal communication across multiple healthcare professionals.

Project Leads: Gabriella Danziger, Gabrielle Osher, Anna Haigh, Maya Frost, Dr. Melinda Ring, Dr. David Victorson (Northwestern University)

Brief Project Description, including Feasibility and Anticipated Impact:

In collaboration with the Osher Center at Northwestern, we established a medical student interest group to bring together students seeking integrative health opportunities and demonstrate how integrative medicine can be incorporated into education and practice. However, there is a lack of coordination between medical students and integrative health opportunities for career development (shadowing, education, etc.) at Northwestern and across Osher Collaborative sites. To address this, we aim to create and pilot test a scalable toolkit that equips medical student interest groups nationwide with the strategies needed to engage with integrative health. 

If funded, we will develop and test this toolkit across partnering Osher sites, based on a framework to establish and expand Integrative Health Interest Groups. This toolkit will have four key components: (1) creating integrative health shadowing opportunities, (2) offering well-defined research experiences, (3) designing curricula for hosting integrative health events, and (4) fostering collaboration through an online platform.

Estimated Budget Request: $20,000