1975
California Senate Bill 86 (Chapter 267, Statutes of 1975) creates the Acupuncture Advisory Committee under the Board of Medical Examiners and allows the practice of acupuncture but only upon a prior diagnosis or referral by a licensed physician, chiropractor or dentist.
February 1999
The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) signs the organizational change memorandum creating the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and making it the 25th independent component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Congress later renames the NCCAM the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) in 2014.
David Felten, MD, PhD, is named director of the Susan Samueli Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine.
May 2002
The Samueli Center hosts the first annual Women’s Wellness Day community education event, introducing integrative medicine options to local residents. Jessica Behrens, philanthropist and wife of advisory board chair Stanley Behrens, chairs the event.
2003
John Longhurst, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, cardiovascular division, clinical cardiologist and former chair of the University of California, Irvine Department of Medicine, becomes director of the Samueli Center.
Longhurst, a nationally renowned physician-scientist, brought his rigorous research methods to understand the autonomic nervous system and cardiac physiology effects of electroacupuncture and mechanisms underlying its clinical effects on blood pressure.See below (2006) for greater details on Longhurst’s academic achievements.
Longhurst recruits Wadie Najm, MD, a double board-certified physician in family medicine and geriatrics, and a professor of family medicine, to become the first medical director of the Samueli Center. Najm starts teaching medical students and family medicine residents the principles and practice of integrative medicine.
Najm was an academic faculty member at UC Irvine for 20 years before his passing in 2014. His interests in integrative health practices spanned nutrition, acupuncture, and beyond. He was known for his dedication to his patients, often visiting them at home when they couldn’t make it to his clinic. Najm also had a deep passion for lifelong learning and research, as he frequently attended conferences and lectures to advance his understanding of integrative medicine.
2004
The UC Irvine Samueli Center joins as one of the early members of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health. By 2024, 80 highly esteemed academic medical centers, nursing schools, and health systems become members.
2006
John Longhurst, MD, PhD, is appointed Susan Samueli Chair in Integrative Medicine in recognition of his academic contributions to the field of integrative medicine.
Longhurst’s lab investigates the influence of acupuncture on regulation of the cardiovascular system, including studies of the somatic sensory nervous system activated by acupuncture, central neural processing, and the influence of acupuncture on sympathetic outflow and cardiovascular function. He pioneered the field of integrative cardiovascular neurobiology, including central neural regulation of the autonomic nervous system. This included investigations of cardiovascular reflex responses and mechanisms of cardiovascular regulation influenced by acupuncture or prolonged and repeated somatosensory afferent stimulation on cardiovascular diseases. He held multiple NIH grants to study the mechanisms of action of acupuncture modulating the mechanisms driving the overexcitation of the cardiovascular system leading to increases in blood pressure. These studies explored the ability of acupuncture to lower elevated blood pressure in patients with mild to moderate hypertension and to reduce elevated blood pressure and myocardial ischemia in experimental models. He received funding from the Adolph Coors Foundation in 1999 to translate his basic science work into human clinical studies. John published over 250 original articles, reviews, and book chapters. Among these were a large body of evidence on the underlying mechanisms and effects of a single 30-min prolonged stimulation of specific somatosensory afferents (electroacupuncture) to minimize sympathoexcitatory cardiovascular reflex responses.
Longhurst showed that sustained mild to moderate hypertension is also alleviated by a course of eight electroacupuncture treatments. His vision of the integrative function of visceral and somatosensory afferent activation on cardiovascular neurobiological responses provides both clinical evidence and future research directions on the feasibility and neurophysiological mechanisms of electroacupuncture.
May 2007
The Samueli Center adds naturopathic treatments to its service line, becoming the first academic medical center in Southern California to offer this type of treatment.
July 2012
Sheila Peterson begins 10 years of service as chair of the Samueli Center Advisory Board, providing valued community leadership during a period of transition and growth for the center.
David Kilgore, MD, introduces the university’s first integrative medicine residency track, offering family medicine residents additional education and training in the diagnosis and treatment of patients using the tools and philosophies of integrative medicine. Curriculum is taught in a longitudinal fashion over the course of the three-year program, with various educational elements integrated into the standard family medicine residency curriculum.
August 2015
The Samueli Center researchers report that patients with hypertension treated with acupuncture experienced drops in their blood pressure that lasted up to a month. Their work is the first to scientifically (translated from preclinical studies) confirm that this ancient Chinese practice is beneficial in treating mild to moderate hypertension, and it indicates that regular use could help people control their blood pressure and lessen their risk of stroke and heart disease.
“This clinical study is the culmination of more than a decade of bench research in this area. By using Western scientific rigor to validate an ancient Eastern therapy, we feel we have integrated Chinese and Western medicine and provided a beneficial guideline for treating a disease that affects millions in the U.S.”
John Longhurst, MD, PhD
cardiologist and former director of the Samueli Center
September 2015
Culinary Medicine elective takes UC Irvine School of Medicine students into the kitchen for hands-on cooking classes that brings abstract knowledge about nutrition to life and share simple culinary techniques and principles to create healthy dishes.
June 2016
The Samueli Center, alongside UCI Health and UC Irvine School of Medicine, joins several Orange County community partners to launch an initiative designed to improve health outcomes for the underserved through an integrative approach to medicine. “Live Healthy OC – Empowering a Community of Wellness” seeks to shift the focus of community health centers from disease treatment to disease prevention and wellness. The initiative is supported by a generous grant from the UniHealth Foundation to support the project between 2016 and 2019.
October 2016
The Samueli Center launches the first naturopathic residency in an allopathic medical center. The residency program is offered through a collaboration with Bastyr University, the first and only naturopathic medical program in California accredited by both the institutional accreditation with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, a U.S. Department of Education-recognized regional accrediting agency, and the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME), a specialized accrediting board recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.
July 2019
Amid the aroma of garlic, onion and myriad spices, UCI Health officially opened a gleaming new teaching kitchen at its bustling Family Health Center in Santa Ana. The nearly 1,100-square-foot, state-of-the-art Lois Eisenberg Teaching Kitchen is used for group cooking sessions for patients and a host of nutritional education programs for the surrounding community.
August 2019
UC Irvine School of Medicine introduces the mission-based Health Education to Advance Leaders in Integrative Medicine (HEAL-IM) program. This four-year longitudinal program for UC Irvine medical students provides a sound foundation on integrating the best of conventional medicine with an evidence-informed, whole-person approach to patient-centered care.
December 2019
Sheila and James Peterson, UC Irvine Foundation trustees and co-chairs of UC Irvine’s Brilliant Future fundraising campaign, donate $1 million to the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute to support nutrition research, education, and treatment.
January 2020
Medicare covers acupuncture treatment for chronic low back pain as an alternative to opioids, opening the door for many more patients to receive affordable, non-pharmacologic pain care.
March 2020
Karen Lindsay, PhD, RDN, diet and nutrition counselor, is named a Samueli Early Career Endowed Chair in Integrative Health, the first research chair in the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute.
April 2020
Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute provides integrative services at no cost to University of California faculty and staff systemwide to help with exhaustion, stress management and wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic.
September 2020
UCI Health nurses are offered voluntary web-based training in integrative nursing. More than 95 percent of nurses completed the program, putting knowledge to work for their patients and themselves.
Shaista Malik, MD, PhD, MPH, founding executive director of the Samueli Institute, is named a Kickass Woman in O.C. by Orange Coast Magazine. The publication describes a kickass woman as “having a strong effect on someone or something; powerful” and “exceptionally good; spectacular; impressive.”
April 2021
UC Irvine receives a $5 million gift from Linda and Mike Mussallem, CEO of Edwards Lifesciences and UC Irvine Foundation trustee, to support integrative cardiology training and research in the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute and initiate an integrative health and wellness coaching program.
May 2021
Sherry and John Phelan donate $1 million to the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute to support an integrative cancer remission program. The multidisciplinary survivorship program gives patients access to care with integrative providers in nutrition, psychology, acupuncture and naturopathic medicine as well as support from health coaches.
August 2021
The Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute launches an integrative cardiology fellowship that is focused on building the knowledge and experience needed to incorporate integrative modalities such as mindfulness, biofeedback, nutrition counseling, preventative care, nutraceuticals, and acupuncture. This is accomplished by a distinctive collaboration with UCI Health whereby the fellow has an opportunity for direct patient care, through inpatient and outpatient clinical encounters, and robust research endeavors with extensive network-wide resources. The University of California, Irvine has been a leader in the field of integrative cardiology under the leadership of Shaista Malik, MD, PhD, MPH, founding associate vice chancellor for integrative health and founding executive director of the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute.
July 2022
The Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute at UC Irvine and University Hospitals (UH) Connor Whole Health assume co-leadership of BraveNet – the first and largest whole health, practice-based research network in the United States. BraveNet is a nationwide consortium comprised of academic health systems conducting evidence-informed research on therapies used in whole-person health. SSIHI assumes the role of data coordinating center under Shaista Malik, MD, PhD, MPH, founding associate vice chancellor for integrative health and founding executive director of the Samueli Institute.
Jeffery Dusek, PhD, serves as BraveNet’s principal investigator through his role as director of outcomes research at the Samueli Institute. The team strives to advance integrative medicine by providing clinical outcomes and cost-benefit data to the medical and scientific communities.
The Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences opens the doors to its new building. This is home to professionals in the UC Irvine schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy & pharmaceutical sciences, public & population health, and the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. These units partner with colleagues across the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences and UCI Health systems to improve medical care and study the future of human health.
2023
The Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute records its highest ambulatory visit volume in a fiscal year, totaling 28,578 visits. This represents a 31 percent increase from the previous year, and a 175 percent increase over five years. Consequently, SSIHI emerges as the largest ambulatory and inpatient integrative health program in the U.S.
Meanwhile, studies by researchers at SSIHI receive $12.972 million in new or continued funding from the National Institutes of Health – the most active funding in a fiscal year for the institute. The impressive grants fund research that explore the neuroimmune mechanisms underlying electroacupuncture effect on vascular function, the metabolic effects of prenatal diet and stress during pregnancy, and more.
A portion of the funding also supports the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative (TKC), a multisite trial collaboration between SSIHI, Harvard University, UCLA, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and University of Texas Health in Houston. TKC aims to assess the feasibility and preliminary impact of the TKC curriculum on health outcomes and wellbeing among adults with clinically defined obesity and one additional metabolic syndrome symptom. The TKC curriculum is an interactive year-long program that teaches culinary skills, nutrition education, mindfulness, and stress reduction, promotes movement, and optimizes behavior change through health coaching strategies.
January 2023
The Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute, along with UCI Health, is honored for excellence in healthcare by the Greater Irvine Chamber. At the Excellence in Healthcare Gala, the Samueli Institute is presented with the Wellness Programs award, which honors a program that improves the health and wellness of a patient or staff population and addresses upstream health concerns through fitness and healthy habits.
March 2023
Shaista Malik, MD, PhD, MPH, founding executive director of the Samueli Institute, is named Woman of the Year for Irvine by California Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris. Assemblywoman Petrie-Norris honors Malik in a celebratory event for her commitment to community service, innovative integrative healthcare, research and education of future healthcare professionals. “All of these women … they’re tackling some of the toughest challenges facing our cities today and facing the planet today,” says Petrie-Norris.
April 2023
Richard Harris, PhD, joins the UC Irvine Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute as the second Susan & Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Integrative Health and a UC Irvine School of Medicine professor in the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Care. Harris comes to UC Irvine after 21 years at the University of Michigan, where he was previously a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology. Harris has investigated the neurobiological mechanisms of both pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic (acupuncture/acupressure) treatments for chronic pain and fatigue. He also has focused on the role of brain neurotransmitters and their receptors in humans with chronic pain and will continue this line of research at UC Irvine.
