The 2005 Bravewell Leadership Award
The second Bravewell Leadership Award Event was held Thursday, November 10, 2005 at Pier Sixty-Chelsea Piers in New York City. The five finalists honored that evening were:
Brian M. Berman, MD
Founder and Director of the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine
James S. Gordon, MD
Founder and Director of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine
Erminia Guarneri, MD
Founder and Medical Director of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine
Kathi Kemper, MD
Founder of the Center for Holistic Pediatric Education and Research at Boston's Children's Hospital and Professor of Pediatrics at Wake Forest University
Dean Ornish, MD
President and Director of Preventive Medicine Research Institute
Before an audience of approximately 400 people, Brian Berman was named as the recipient of the 2005 Bravewell Leadership Award and was gifted the $100,000 award.
About Brian M. Berman, MD
One of integrative medicine's foremost academic leaders, Brian M. Berman, MD, is the Director and Professor of the Complementary Medicine Program and the Founder and Director of the Center for Integrative Medicine, the first integrative medicine center at a US academic institution, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. In addition, he has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, John Hopkins, Stanford, and Shanghai universities.
The Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland, which is one of the largest clinics connected with academia, sees more than 5,000 patients a year. "In searching for new ways to relieve suffering caused by chronic disease, I have looked for treatment options that are minimally invasive and stimulate the individual's own healing power. The Center also seeks to empower people on their healing journey and in maintaining health," Dr. Berman says.
Dr. Berman received his medical degree from the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, Ireland and completed his residency in Family Medicine at the University of Maryland. An accomplished researcher, Dr. Berman has published more than 120 peer-reviewed articles and books and has been the principal investigator of five major National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants. His report on the "Effectiveness of Acupuncture as Adjunctive Therapy in Osteoarthritis of the Knee," which is one of the largest randomized controlled trials in acupuncture to date, was published as the lead article in the Annals of Internal Medicine in the December 21, 2004 issue.
Dr. Berman chaired the NIH's first ad hoc advisory committee on alternative and complementary medicine and edited its first report, Expanding Medical Horizons. He served on the Governor of Maryland's Commission on Complementary Medicine and as the first chair of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Berman helped establish, and is the current Chair of, the Complementary Medicine Field for the Cochrane Collaboration, which is a highly esteemed network of more than 9,000 collaborators from 80 countries who review and evaluate scientific literature for their library. The Complementary Medicine Field of the Cochrane Library now contains more than 8,500 clinical trials and 500 systematic reviews. Most recently, Dr. Berman served on the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine's Panel on Complementary Medicine, which is one of the country's most respected independent medical bodies.
Go for biographical information about the finalists
Brian M. Berman, MD
“The future of medicine will be centered on strong healing relationships between health professionals and patients, be grounded in mindfulness and compassion, and focus on whole person care (mind, body and spirit), treating the biopsychosocial as well as the bioenergetic aspects of each person.”