Over 30 years, a successful clinical subspecialty of integrative medicine with clinical care, education and research has been built at UCLA Health, which has been ranked among the top 3 health systems in the Unites States. It is comprised of an inpatient program and 4 outpatient clinics in different regions of Southern California. Most of the patients are referred by more than 500 specialists and subspecialists colleagues for our assistance in the management of their patients. Key to the success of our patient-centered, problem-solving approach is emphasizing health promotion, disease prevention, treatment, and is safe, effective, affordable and accessible to all. This model blends of the best of modern biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine. Besides providing clinically useful care in consultation with our colleagues, other factors need to be considered including financial viability, social acceptability and more. The most important strategic decision in building our clinical program is to focus on using the whole systems approach to help patients with chronic pain and related problems because of stressors of different types and homeostatic decline. The second most important strategic move is to build education programs around the clinic, starting with medical student selective followed by resident rotations and development of the fellowship program. All our faculty physicians have been trained as fellows in the Center's integrative East-West model, and have further enriched the model and implemented this approach to help patients in different regions along with the expansion of UCLA Health throughout Southern California. Our education programs have introduced the model to close to a thousand students and residents at UCLA. Most of them have moved to populate different specialties and remain as faculty clinician educators, which constitute a major referral source. Last but not least, a thriving program requires a stable and growing clinical environment along with mission shared by all stakeholders including leadership, faculty and staff, patients, referring colleagues, trainees and students as well as donors and volunteers of the Center working in concert.
