Duke Integrative Medicine has its roots in the great tradition of collaboration and synergy at Duke University Health System.
Dr. Marty Sullivan
Dr. Larry Burke
Dr. Jeff Brantley
In the early 1990s, a group of visionary medical doctors gathered together to discuss the vast possibilities for healing that exist in all of the scientific, cultural, and spiritual traditions. They formed a journal club, and, under the direction of Drs. Marty Sullivan, Larry Burk, and Jeffrey Brantley, they led discussions across all the academic disciplines at the university, and explored avenues for extending the boundaries of practice, research, and teaching at Duke. They held the first Duke Mind Body Spirit Conference in 1996, attracting more than 600 people from around the globe including leaders in the field Jon Kabat Zinn, Elmer Green, and Joan Borysenko.
Dr. Ralph Snyderman
Duke University Health System Chancellor Dr. Ralph Snyderman embraced the work of Drs. Sullivan, Burk, and Brantley with enthusiasm and brought a vision that extended beyond the walls of the University, imagining a living laboratory that could hold answers to many of the most systemic challenges to the American health care system. A Medical Center Planning Committee was formed to plan for a Center to hold this vision at Duke, and, with the support of a grant from the Duke Endowment, and with the leadership of Drs. Snyderman and Sullivan, The Duke Center for Integrative Medicine was founded in 1998. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was the first public program offered by the Center under the direction of Dr. Jeffrey Brantley.
In 2000, Dr. Snyderman’s vision was catapulted forward when he hired Dr. Tracy Gaudet to lead the Center into a new century and when Christy Mack of the C.J. Mack Foundation stepped forward in partnership with a generous gift of support. Along with an endorsement across the faculty of the health system , they began to plan to build the state-of-the art healing environment executed by the masterful architecture firm Duda/Paine.
The doors of Duke Integrative Medicine opened in November 2006. The building was the very first medical facility in North Carolina to receive LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for its stewardship of the environment. In 2010, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) named the building a National Design Award winner, hailing it as a “beautiful project….powerful and effective… a masterfully executed project where plan, finishes, materials and philosophy seem to find common ground…an introspective healing environment.”
Dr. Tracy Gaudet
In January 2011, Dr. Gaudet left Duke Integrative Medicine to join the Veterans Health Administration in Washington, DC, where she is the first Director of its Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation.
In September 2011, Dr. Adam Perlman became Executive Director of Duke Integrative Medicine, and the Associate Vice President of Duke Health and Wellness. Prior, he was Executive Director of the Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (ICAM) and associate professor of medicine within the School of Health Related Professions at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). Dr. Perlman was chairperson for the Department of Primary Care within the School of Health Related Professions at UMDNJ, and he held the UMDNJ Hunterdon Endowed Professorship in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Dr. Perlman has served as chair for the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, a consortium comprising more than 50 leading academic medical centers around the country with integrative medical programs.
Dr. Adam Perlman
Dr. Perlman’s scholarly activities include numerous grants and publications. He was guest editor for the Complementary and Alternative Medicine volume of Medical Clinics of North America, and is associate editor for the Complementary and Alternative Medicine section of the Physician Information and Education Resource (PIER), developed by the American College of Physicians and American Society for Internal Medicine. His diverse research interests have included a clinical trial evaluating the effect of multivitamin supplementation on school performance in underserved children, a trial assessing the efficacy of massage for osteoarthritis of the knee and a survey exploring the use of CAM in patients with cancer. Most recently, he was the recipient of a R01 Research Grant, funded by the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, to continue his research on massage therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee. Dr. Perlman’s research has been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine and featured in the New York Times.
