The National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) graduates 25% of all practicing naturopathic physicians in the United States and is the premiere school for classical Chinese medicine in the country. The first cycle of the Research in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research Program (R-CAMP) successfully increased the quality and quantity of evidence-informed practice (EIP) content in the didactic curriculum at NCNM, trained 27 faculty and 366 students in EIP, and disseminated these efforts at local, national, and international conferences. The R-CAMP Renewal will build upon these accomplishments through four inter- related initiatives: Curriculum, Faculty Development, Evaluation and Dissemination. The Curriculum Initiative will sustain EIP curriculum development in the didactic portion of NCNM programs and translate the EIP concepts into the clinical curriculum. Faculty will employ three well-established teaching strategies to implement EIP in the clinical curriculum. Electives developed in the first cycle of R-CAMP will be combined with additional new courses, ultimately leading to a research master's degree. New pre-degree and post-degree research training opportunities for NCNM students and residents will be developed, including a Student Research Scholars Program. The Faculty Development Initiative will build upon the faculty training opportunities in the first R-CAMP cycle by offering EIP training to residents and alumni. NCNM faculty will shadow OHSU faculty to observe how EIP is integrated on clinic shifts. Faculty will further hone their EIP teaching skills with two short courses and one-on-one mentoring. In addition, through collaboration with OHSU, higher-level research training will be available for NCNM faculty via mentored projects. The Evaluation and Program Assessment Initiative will be an approach to systematically collect and utilize both quantitative and qualitative data from all of the inter-related projects. This data is used to inform project implementation strategies and to gage success. Activities sponsored by or related to the grant will be evaluated, documented, and disseminated in such a way as to facilitate the adoption of the research curricula at other CAM institutions. The Dissemination and Sustainability Initiative will communicate R-CAMP results to the NCNM community, the Portland CAM community, and the national medical research and naturopathic communities. A major new dissemination project will be partnering with Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine to share EIP curriculum templates and teaching strategies. We will continue to disseminate through manuscripts, presentations at conferences, blogs, newsletters, webinars and web-based videos. The R-CAMP Renewal will allow NCNM graduates to better communicate with their allopathic counterparts, improve patient care, and foster the skills they need to contribute to the CAM evidence base by collaborating with researchers and collecting data from their own clinics.
NCNM graduates serve as primary care practitioners in community clinics, private practice, integrative medicine and public health settings. The R-CAMP Renewal will allow graduates to better communicate with their allopathic counterparts, improve patient care, and foster the skills they need to contribute to the CAM evidence base.
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