From day one of her family and preventive medicine residency, Siri Loken, MD, was well prepared to help patients explore different paths to personal health and wellbeing. When she received the results of her first clinic patient’s A1C and lipid panel, she confidently recommended evidence-based lifestyle recommendations instead of prescribing a medication.
Loken was in the first class to graduate from the UCI School of Medicine Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM) program last May, taking with her program insights on the tools and philosophies of integrative medicine.
The daughter of a psychiatrist, Loken earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from New York University, worked in a geriatric psychiatry unit and traveled to Sri Lanka to provide mental health services. She was on course to becoming a psychiatrist.
“Then I started learning medicine and realized I actually really liked all of medicine and was more interested in the idea of being everyone’s psychiatrist, rather than treating the severely mentally ill,” she said. “So, primary care seemed like a better fit for me, where I could be at the forefront of mental health, practicing in an integrated behavioral healthcare setting.”
Loken was among the first to enter the mission-based HEAL-IM program when it launched in 2019. In the most recent year, almost 20% of UCI’s first-year medical students applied for the opportunity to learn concepts in wellness, resiliency, nutrition, mind-body and exercise, integrative medicine modalities, motivational interviewing and more.
Throughout Loken’s integrative health educational experience, which spanned her remaining years in medical school, she connected with residents and attending physicians, who, like her, believed it was important to treat the whole person.
“I had the benefit of knowing all throughout medical school that there was going to be a future in medicine that made me excited, that I was going to be passionate about, that would make me feel fulfilled; I was going to have a better way of dealing with the human parts of medicine,” she said.
Today, Loken is applying what she learned about whole health through HEAL-IM to help University of Utah Health patients achieve their best health.
“I think it will make me a better doctor in that I have a larger menu of things to offer my patients. And I am going to view my patients as partners in the process,” she said.
