Creative Ideas for Curriculum Development
Since 1999, NCCAM has sponsored two education grant initiatives supporting projects designed to:
- Refine and expand approaches for including CAM information in medical and nursing school curricula
- Increase the quality and quantity of research-related content in the curricula at schools that train CAM practitioners
- Encourage partnerships between conventional and CAM practitioners and their patients, toward delivering the best possible health care in an integrated medicine environment.
The October 2007 issue of Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, features NCCAM’s education grant program, including papers by nine author teams who are recipients of these grants (see nccam.nih.gov/research/results/spotlight/102607.htm).
This publication followed the 2007 annual meeting for the principal investigators and senior staff of these projects, which took place June 21–22, 2007, in Bethesda, Maryland. The event attracted 33 attendees from conventional medical and nursing schools, schools that train CAM practitioners, and the American Medical Student Association.
At the annual meeting, researchers' presentations addressed developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining curricula; sharing information (for example, curriculum content, learning approaches, and learner outcomes) with a wider audience; and achieving successful partnerships. Often in these projects, professionals from a variety of disciplines work together toward common goals.
Examples of Education Grant Approaches
- New CAM modules in required courses
- Elective courses on CAM topics
- Special lectures
- Discussion groups
- Tutorials
- Clinical field experiences
- Internet programs
- Conferences and workshops
- Tutorials and databases on CAM evidence-based literature
Nancy Pearson, Ph.D., NCCAM program officer, said of the meeting, "We at NCCAM were impressed by the degree of cooperation and idea-sharing among the schools and their development of creative ways to sustain their CAM-curricula programs." For more about these projects, see nccam.nih.gov/research/extramural/awards/2006/ and nccam.nih.gov/research/extramural/awards/2005/ (scroll down to project numbers beginning with "R25").
