Expo Highlights Latest in Complementary Medicine

5/2/2008

Hundreds of healthcare professionals, and Miller School students, faculty and staff filled the lobby, spa and group fitness areas of the Medical Wellness Center on April 29 for the first-ever Integrative Medicine Symposium and Expo.

Presentations, panel discussions and interactive demonstrations at the daylong forum provided a comprehensive look at the ever growing, but sometimes underrecognized field of complementary medicine.

The event has a been "a long time coming," said chair Janet Konefal, Ph.D., M.P.H., L.Ac., who designed the symposium to foster the integration of conventional and complementary medicine among medical health professionals.

"Complementary medicine is focused around wellness and health promotion," she said. "With that in mind, we thought our incredible Medical Wellness Center provided the perfect setting for the symposium. The staff was absolutely integral to making this event a success."

In April 2007, Dr. Konefal was named assistant dean of complementary and integrative medicine, expanding her long-running role as director of the Miller School's Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, and highlighting the importance of complementary medicine to the future of health care and the growth of the Miller School.

In his opening remarks at the symposium, Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., praised the efforts of Dr. Konefal and her team and discussed the future of the field and the role it will play at the Miller School. "I believe we're going to see a substantial explosion of the field," he said. "We have a campus that offers cutting-edge treatments to repair heart failure with stem cells, takes on the worst cancer cases and restores vision, and also embraces, supports and promotes integrative and complementary medicine."

Throughout the day, medical school faculty and local, regional and national experts in complementary medicine presented on a myriad of topics including herbal medicine, aromatherapy, meditation, chiropractic healthcare and nutritional supplementation. For those preferring a more hands-on approach to learning, acupuncture, laser, and pulse electro-magnetic field therapy demonstrations gave curious participants first-hand experience with some of the preferred methods of diagnosis and treatment the field currently offers.

"There is a clear division between medical students who are open to complementary medicine and those who are not," said Erin Forster, a first-year medical student who attended as part of the Doctoring Program's complementary and alternative medicine theme. "Maybe this will close the divide."