Oregon College of Oriental Medicine (OCOM) is pleased to announce the award of an $88,000 grant by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This award supplements OCOM’s previous Acupuncture Practitioner Research Education Enhancement (APREE) grant. OCOM is the only stand-alone college of acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM) to be awarded such a research education grant.

The original 2005-2009 APREE grant was carried out in collaboration with the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) School of Nursing. Its purpose was three-fold: to strengthen research literacy, foster a culture of research appreciation and recognize the role of clinical experience and other forms of evidence in acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM) education and clinical practice.

Based on the outcomes of that grant, OCOM faculty members have introduced a Western biomedical-based perspective in key courses; our master’s curriculum now includes a mandatory three-course research sequence; the doctoral curriculum includes three modules of intensive research coursework and three Research Grand Rounds seminars throughout the academic year; and the OCOM intern clinic has become an integrated teaching and research clinic.

The focus of the 2011 supplemental award is to further develop OCOM’s clinic-based outcomes research program and to provide students with hands-on research experience. In their final year, master’s students can work in small mentored groups to formulate researchable questions that utilize the data collected for the clinic outcomes program, help faculty mentors fulfill their own scholarship and research interests, and participate in the research proposed by doctoral students in their capstone proposals. This year, students can select from among 17 faculty or doctoral student-led research projects.

Thanks to the APREE research education grant, OCOM faculty and students now participate in a school-wide research culture that is unique among AOM colleges. A survey to be released in early November will help plan future research education initiatives.