Dr. Brian Berman is the President of the Nova Institute for Health (formerly The Institute for Integrative Health), which he founded in 2007 to catalyze new ideas in health. He is also Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where he was Director of the Center for Integrative Medicine. Trained in family medicine and pain management, as well as complementary medical approaches such as traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, Dr. Berman has dedicated his academic career to evaluating the efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness of complementary and integrative medicine. In 1991, he founded the first U.S. academic medical center-based program for integrative medicine. He now continues to conduct his National Institutes of Health-funded research at the University of Maryland, while expanding his focus to understanding and promoting health through his leadership of the Nova Institute for Health.
Dr. Berman is one of the most highly funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers in the area of integrative and complementary medicine. During his tenure at the University of Maryland, the Center for Integrative Medicine was awarded more than $56 million in research funding and had more than 900 publications. Dr. Berman has been principal investigator of five NIH Center of Excellence, multi-study grants focused on complementary medical interventions for the treatment of arthritis and related disorders and irritable bowel syndrome. Through this work he built collaborations with preeminent institutions in Hong Kong, Australia, Europe, and the United States. In 2004, Dr. Berman’s landmark study showing acupuncture to be a safe and effective therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee was published as the lead article in the Annals of Internal Medicine. His research publications include five books and more than 300 articles in leading medical journals focused on traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, herbs, and Qi Gong, as well as other mind-body and integrative medicine approaches for a wide range of chronic health and pain-related disorders.
A pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, Dr. Berman was honored with the prestigious Bravewell Leadership Award for Integrative Medicine in 2005. The award “celebrates and supports visionaries who have committed their medical careers to transforming healthcare in America and ushering in a new practice of medicine.” In 2018, he was further honored with the Bravewell Service Award for his ongoing commitment to the field. He was chair of the ad hoc advisory committee to the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine when it opened in 1992, as well as the report to the U.S. Congress on alternative medicine. Subsequently, he served on their advisory committee for three other terms through 2014. In 1996, Dr. Berman helped found and now serves as field director for the complementary medicine field of Cochrane, an internationally renowned organization recognized as a leader in evidence-based medicine. He was a panel member of the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine’s 2005 report on complementary medicine and was the first chair of the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health, now with over 78 American universities in its membership.
Dr. Berman now leads the Nova Institute for Health, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to catalyze new ideas in health, explore the complex network of factors that influence health, and promote the well-being of individuals, communities, and the planet.
He serves on the McCormick Science Institute’s Advisory Board, the American Pain Society Task Force on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the NFL Players Association Player Wellness Pain Advisory Board, and recently participated in the “Contributions of Social and Behavioral Research in Addressing the Opioid Crisis,” part of the series of NIH meetings on “Cutting Edge Science to End the Opioid Crisis.”
Watch Dr. Berman speak about the “Seventh Generation Principle” of the Native American Iriquois people in this presentation from the December 2020 inVIVO Project Earthrise conference.
Hear Dr. Berman’s acceptance speech for the 2005 Bravewell Leadership Award:
