Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM)

HEAL-IM is a UCI School of Medicine program designed to provide a future generation of physicians with additional training and skills in the tools and philosophies of integrative medicine. This program prepares medical students to be future leaders in effective, compassionate, whole-person care.
A recent medical graduate proudly holding her diploma.
Admissions
A medical student learning from her teacher in a clinical setting.
Core Curriculum
Medical students take a break from their studies to play tai chi tennis.
Financial Support
Med students learning culinary skills.
Additional Opportunities
Heal-IM Staff Member
Our Team

Integrative medicine can be defined as a healing-oriented practice of medicine that:

  • Reaffirms the importance of the relationship between practitioner and patient
  • Focuses on the whole person (body, mind and spirit)
  • Is informed by evidence
  • Makes use of all appropriate therapeutic and lifestyle approaches, healthcare professionals and disciplines to achieve optimal health and healing

Underlying the spirit of integrative medicine is the commitment to involve the patient as an active partner in his or her care, with a focus on teaching self-care and self-management tools, as well as supporting healthy lifestyle behaviors that are the basis for optimal health and wellness.

Integrative medicine also highlights the need for health equity and for ensuring access to much-needed prevention and wellness resources in underserved communities.

Fundamentally, integrative medicine recognizes that health systems need to move beyond just the diagnosis and treatment of disease complications (pathogenesis) to fully embrace health creation, or salutogenesis. We believe the combination of evidence-based integrative care, together with advanced conventional treatment options, form the basis for providing our patients with the most effective, compassionate, whole person medical care for the 21st century.

Learn More About HEAL-IM

HEAL-IM is a complete mission fit for me, the clear next step on my path to becoming an Integrative Medicine practitioner and leader in the lifestyle medicine movement. The program offers training in many of the complementary modalities that initially drew me to medicine, modalities that I studied on my own at my own expense for many years…. HEAL-IM will enable me to start becoming the kind of holistic physician I want to be straight out the gates of medical school, not ten years down the line in fellowship.” -Anna Rasmussen, Class of 2023
Anna

UCI medical students come to HEAL-IM with varying backgrounds and expectations.  Some have worked on educating underserved patients, others have focused on oncology research.  Some have firsthand experience with integrative approaches to health conditions, a few have professional experience in integrative health, while others have navigated conventional and alternative medical systems on behalf of friends and family.

Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute

UCI’s Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute (SSIHI) created the Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM) in partnership with the UCI School of Medicine. Students may learn from the Institute’s clinical faculty and researchers at seminars and conferences, and by rotating through the SSIHI clinic to observe integrative and interdisciplinary approaches.

Learn More About SSIHI

The combination of training in evidence-based integrative care, together with the core medical school curriculum foundation of cutting edge conventional treatment, gives HEAL-IM students the unique knowledge and skills they will need to provide their future patients with the most effective, compassionate, whole person medical care for the 21st century.

HEAL-IM staff and leaders talknig about upcoming schedle.
Unique Program Focused on Integrative Health

UC Irvine School of Medicine is one of the few medical schools in the country to offer a 4 year longitudinal educational training track in Integrative Health, equipping medical students to be future leaders in effective, compassionate, whole-person care that will benefit their patients no matter what specialty they plan on going into.

HEAL-IM students learning cooking and wellness tecniques in the Culinary Medicine Program. ,undefined
Exposure Across a Broad Spectrum

Students accepted into the HEAL-IM program participate in a variety of didactic and experiential training opportunities taught by a diverse and experienced multidisciplinary faculty from across the spectrum of Integrative Health which help provide a broad exposure to the tools and philosophies of integrative medicine.

HEAL-IM Yoga class
Counts Toward Elective Time

HEAL-IM students may also choose to use elective time to complete additional selected integrative medicine certificate training in areas such as biofeedback, acupuncture, osteopathic manipulation techniques, medical hypnosis or culinary medicine to support innovative integrative medicine practice in their future careers.

HEAL-IM students in the Culinary Medicine class highlight their cooking dishes

Giving

Your gift supports training of medical students in foundational elements of integrative health, so they can help build a future in which wellness will be systematically promoted and chronic disease prevented.

Support Our Mission
A student in the Heal-IM Program learning how to use massage to help her patients.

Contact Us

For more information about our Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM) program, please contact Laurie Skorheim, HEAL-IM Program Coordinator.

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