Johns Hopkins will now offer selected, evidence-
based alternative medicine services,
including acupuncture, a mind-body
program and a consultation service, through
the Johns Hopkins Center for Integrative
Medicine. The program is designed to fill a
void for those patients who wish to explore
proven alternative therapies not offered by
conventional health care providers.
We developed CIM to scientifically
test and review alternative approaches to
medicine in order to ascertain what is beneficial,
effective and safe and what is not.
This is why we can now enthusiastically
offer acupuncture and mind-body programs,
which have been found effective for many
patients,” Adrian Dobs, director of CIM and
the Hopkins Clinical Trials Unit, said.
CIM was established five years ago with a
$7.8 million grant from the National Institutes
of Health and a mandate to study alternative
therapies for cancer with the same
scientific rigor that Johns Hopkins employs
in its other clinical trials. A grant from
the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer
Research is funding a new, complementary
and integrative medicine program for oncology
patients. Mind-body courses of varying
lengths are designed to help patients cope
with their emotional responses to cancer as
well as the symptoms of the disease.
Also offered by CIM is a consulting service
to help patients and their health care providers
sort through various complementary therapies
to determine which approaches work
best for them as well as to ensure that any
herbal or nontraditional drugs being taken
are compatible with other medical drugs.
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