Bastyr Receives NIH Funding to Train CAM Researchers

Bastyr Receives NIH Funding to Train CAM Researchers

KENMORE,Wash.--Bastyr University received a $1.1 million, five-year renewable grant from the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to train scientists to do research on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Bastyr will head the training grant in collaboration with four other Washington institutions--the University of Washington, Washington State University, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Center for Health Studies at Group Health Cooperative.

Bastyr (www.bastyr.edu) is accepting applications from predoctoral and postdoctoral fellows to begin training this July. According to the school, the program will assign trainees to a mentoring team of one Bastyr faculty member and one member of another institution. The goal is for each trainee to produce publishable research on CAM techniques and further cross-training of traditional and CAM scientists.

"A successful medical system provides patients and physicians with the ability to choose from the best possible selection of therapeutic and preventive health care regimens, including CAM therapies, that have been proven to be both medically efficacious and cost effective," said Lizbeth Adams, Ph.D., the administrator of the grant. "We are tremendously excited to now have funding provided by NIH which will allow us to more actively pursue our goal [of cross-training scientists]."