Optimal Healing Environments Research [OHE]

A comprehensive OHE program includes the integrated application of mind-body-spirit practices, healing relationships, lifestyle and behavior management, person-centered integrative medicine and healing spaces and places. SIIB research interests are oriented toward the facilitation and stimulation of healing.

1. Evaluation of comprehensive OHE programs. These are existing OHE programs that implement most or all of the core OHE domains in a clinical setting, home, worksite, extended care or other health care settings. Research in this domain is usually of the health services research type.

2. Pragmatic clinical applications of mind and healing [excluding non-locality and basic mechanisms of consciousness, but including mindfulness, meditation, religious and spiritual practices and the effects of personal development/transformative practices and the virtues]. These are projects looking at the clinical, practice and health care impact of mind/body/spirit oriented practices.

3. Healing relationships including the therapeutic alliance. These studies examine the application of patient and relationship oriented skills in clinical settings or community programs that teach enhanced positive social interaction.

4. Lifestyle interventions [both prevention and treatment] involving diet, exercise, addiction and stress management. SIIB does not provide core funding for lifestyle and behavioral medicine studies on lifestyle change. It will collaborate with other organizations doing such research if it is in the context of improved delivery of an OHE.

5. Studies of the meaning response and placebo effect. Of particular interest is the effect of social conditioning related to the placebo effects and the role of conditioning in treatment delivery. In addition, this area evaluates the differential effects of collective vs. individual belief, expectation and intention. Excluded from OHE, but a primary area of SIIB focus in the frontier medicine section, is research on the possible transpersonal and non-local mechanisms of the meaning response/placebo effect.

6. Investigation of CAM interventions under this program are accepted only when they are part of collaborative treatment within an OHE.