An expanding curriculum explores how the brain affects health and healing
By Louis Greenstein
Illustration by Spooky Pooka
An expanding curriculum explores how the brain affects health and healing
he goal of mind-body medicine (MBM), as defined by Firdaus S. Dhabhar, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and director of the Miller School’s Scholarly Concentration in Advancing Mind-Body Medicine, is to maximize health and healing by safely activating and harnessing endogenous biological and psychological defenses from within the patient, while using all other approaches that medicine can provide from the outside. “It is about much more than yoga and meditation, although these are two important modalities of MBM,” Dr. Dhabhar said.
Advancing Mind-Body Medicine is one of several scholarly concentrations available to Miller School students within the NextGenMD curriculum. It encompasses teaching, research and patient care based on the scientific method, and explores and incorporates the most effective principles of modern and traditional/indigenous systems of medicine from around the world.
Students on this popular pathway learn about the biological mechanisms through which the brain affects health and healing. They explore the science of psychoneuroimmunology, stress, sleep, physical activity, nutrition, the doctor-patient relationship, the placebo effect, medical hypnosis, resilience, compassion, happiness and well-being. Working closely with mentors, students take deep dives into novel hypotheses as they work toward capstone project reports and presentations.
To learn more about how the mind-body connection is integrated into the NextGenMD curriculum, we spoke with Dr. Dhabhar and Latha Chandran, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A. ’22, executive dean for education and policy, the Bernard J. Fogel Chair in Medical Education and the founding chair of the Department of Medical Education.
Latha Chandran, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A.
“I believe we will be the first medical school to have an integrated program for the entire student body.”
Mind Meets Body in the Classroom
Firdaus S. Dhabhar, Ph.D.
“Anything we can do to reduce chronic stress is likely to enhance health, healing, performance and well-being.”
What is the background for the mind-body curriculum?
Chandran: I practice lifestyle medicine. I know how it affects me and my health. I thought that transferring this knowledge to students would be fantastic. After all, we as patients — not doctors — have agency over 80% or so of what happens to our health. Imagine if every medical school taught students to teach patients to maintain health and wellness. Imagine at least three-quarters of illnesses being gone. There is trauma, and there are genetic factors beyond your control, but a lot of chronic disease can be prevented through lifestyle and a healthy mind-body connection.
How do you integrate the teaching with research?
Dhabhar: The research and teaching complement and inform each other. Both aim to activate and harness natural biological and psychological healing modalities from within an individual, in conjunction with all other modalities that students learn about in medical school. All along, we emphasize the importance of the scientific method, and of critically evaluating safety and ensuring that we “do no harm.”
I share Dean Chandran’s philosophy. Therefore, we work with preventive and curative approaches in the Advancing Mind-Body Medicine pathway. Additionally, my goal is to enable students to not only survive, but where possible to also be happy, flourish and thrive in medical school and beyond. The research and teaching are synergistic.
For example, in the MBM pathway we learn about biological mechanisms through which stress exerts myriad positive and negative effects on the mind and body. First there is short-term stress. We discovered that this has different effects from chronic stress. During the short-term stress response, there are many changes in the brain and body that enhance protective immunity and the ability to perform mentally and physically. Patients who can mount a good adaptive short-term stress response during surgery show enhanced recovery and better post-surgical outcomes. Anything we can do to prepare and enable people to mount adaptive stress responses when needed is likely to help them.
In contrast, chronic stress reduces or eliminates the ability of your short-term stress response to help you and exerts a slew of deleterious effects on brain and body. Anything we can do to reduce chronic stress is likely to enhance health, healing, performance and well-being. One critically important mediator through which different MBM modalities help people is by reducing/eliminating chronic stress.
The MBM pathway is also an inoculation against doctor burnout. There are two goals: One is to expose students to science-based mind-body modalities to bring health and healing to patients as quickly and completely as possible. Two is to provide students with ways of harnessing MBM approaches for themselves, and to enable them to stay healthy and flourish rather than burn out.
Students in the pathway learn about the placebo effect. Why is this important?
Dhabhar: In the MBM pathway we learn about biological and psychological mediators through which the placebo effect can ameliorate/eliminate pain and symptoms of disorders such as depression, osteoarthritis, Parkinson’s and irritable bowel syndrome. It is important to appreciate that the placebo effect is much more than just a way to test whether or not a drug works. It is a powerful mind-body modality that drives biological changes that can induce remarkable healing and recovery. A tremendous advantage is that the placebo effect can do this without inducing harmful side effects like many drugs do. Therefore, students are encouraged to think about the placebo effect as a physician and patient’s best friend and helper, and to consider what doctors could legally do to harness the placebo effect to help their patients when possible.
How do you plan to further integrate mind-body medicine into the curriculum?
Chandran: My goal is to bring related elements — nutrition, sleep, stress, exercise, lifestyle and so on — together under an umbrella called the Flourishing Healers Program across all three phases of the NextGenMD curriculum. We hope to launch it this fall, and I believe we will be the first medical school to have an integrated program for the entire student body.
Miller School students are science-oriented, curious, critical and questioning. They also have great heart. However, they can lose their empathy in a harried clinical environment, so we also created a curriculum on professional identity formation. Who are you as a doctor? What values do you bring, and how can you keep them intact? It’s a continuous process of evolution in your identity as a physician. When an issue challenges you morally, your response will be informed by your core values. 
