As a Developmental Center for Research in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (DCRC), the NESA Acupuncture Research Collaborative will bring together leaders from the oriental medicine (OM) and conventional medicine communities to critically evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture, and develop sound methodologies and feasible study designs required for acupuncture research. Our DCRC will strengthen and build upon already ongoing collaborations between NESA, the Harvard Medical School's (HMS) Osher Institute, and two other HMS-affiliated institutions, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital Boston. The DCRC will support three developmental/exploratory studies and two infrastructure cores (Administrative and Clinical Trials) that will be synergistically integrated by three themes. The first theme centers around diversifying OM research to evaluate the plurality of approaches employed in clinical practice which will be addressed through the evaluation of both Japanese- and Chinese-style acupuncture. The second theme emphasizes the development and implementation of novel research methods that are required to meet the unique challenges posed in clinical trials of acupuncture and OM. One of our three studies will develop, validate, and test the reliability of an instrument used to derive OM diagnoses in the context of clinical trials. Other methodological issues related to individualization of acupuncture treatments, appropriate controls in acupuncture trials, and the development of outcome measures that reflect the treatment philosophy of OM will also be addressed. The third theme addresses the benefits of acupuncture as an adjunct therapy in the treatment of women's health conditions. Specifically, we will study the application of acupuncture to two conditions for which the current evidence evaluating its efficacy and safety is limited-- chemotherapy-induced neutropenia in women with ovarian cancer, and chronic pelvic pain in adolescent and young women with endometriosis. Integral to our DCRC are a number of academic and administrative mentoring programs through which HMS faculty, staff, and training programs will assist NESA in developing its clinical research infrastructure and capacity to autonomously sustain a productive research program that combines the highest standards of science and the integrity of traditional OM practices. The ultimate goal of our DCRC will be for NESA to play the lead role in the future submission of R01 and R21 proposals that build upon our developmental studies.
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