Learning Through Doing

The word “education” in a university setting often conjures up familiar imagery: lecture halls, laboratory exercises, and discussion groups. These staples of higher education are important, but they often miss the real-world application that makes research a great tool for learning and career advancement.

In 2018, the Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing’s Integrative Health & Wellbeing Research Program (IHWRP) developed a way for complementary and integrative health practitioners to access research experiences and mentorship. Since its inception, the Integrative Health Research Fellowship Program has helped participants advance their careers and learn to conduct more rigorous research that they can then apply in the field for better outcomes in chiropractic care, physical therapy, mindfulness, and other areas of health and wellbeing.

The program fills a critical need for complementary and integrative health (CIH) professionals, who often don’t have the same research opportunities their medical counterparts do. Many CIH institutions do not have programs that combine research and clinical aspects in these fields, and it can be hard for practitioners to take advantage of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) “K awards,” a common resource that medical doctors and registered nurses use to further their research careers. K awards are research scientist development grants that fund a significant amount of an individual’s time for multiple years.

“Because complementary and integrative health professionals have often had less research exposure, they aren’t as competitive for these K awards,” said Roni Evans, DC, PhD, director of the IHWRP and the fellowship program. “What we do is try to bridge the gap so they can develop foundational knowledge and skills, identify mentors, and be on a more level playing field.”

Brent Leininger, DC, MS, PhD, can testify to the program’s effectiveness. As a participant, Leininger, recently promoted to associate professor in the Center’s IHWRP, advanced from an NIH K award to leading his own research as a principal investigator. 

 His research delved into the cost-effectiveness of complementary and integrative health therapies for spinal pain and the representativeness of clinical trial populations. He also participated in NIH-funded trials on therapies such as mindful movement to increase wellbeing in older adults and spinal manipulation and self-management techniques for chronic back pain.

“The most appealing aspect of the program was the ability to apply skills and methods I was learning in the classroom within research projects the team was conducting,” said Leininger. “In my experience at the University, the extent of this experiential learning within the program was unique.”

Research as Education

Mentored research lets learners put skills and concepts into practice, discuss the challenges and successes they experience along the way, and brainstorm ways to continue to improve — all while keeping some guardrails in place to help them navigate the complexity of doing research.

“It is rare for an early-career researcher to be able to get the best experience from working on an entirely new research question on their own; they simply don’t get the full depth and breadth of experiences they need,” Evans said. “We like to take a middle-of-the-road approach where a mentee comes up with a new question that can be answered within the scope of an existing research project.”

This approach leaves room for the fellow to focus on an area of interest to them while also being able to build upon a large existing research infrastructure that IHWRP provides, which enriches the experience.

In some cases, a mentee and mentor will co-develop a research question that leads to new study interventions and even NIH funding. Leininger, for example, worked with his mentors to develop and study a new approach for back-related leg pain that took into account patients’ biological, psychological, and social factors.

Doug Kennedy, PhD, assistant professor and mindfulness instructor in the Center’s IHWRP, came to research after a long career in teaching and new teacher preparation. The program appealed to him as a way to learn alongside his colleagues and continue developing relevant skills that were timely, practical, and immediately applicable to his work.

“I had some research experience in graduate school, but clinical trials are very different,” Kennedy said. “The program, especially the trainings and mentoring, helped me improve my research knowledge and skills while providing meaningful and relevant experience on projects.” 

An Individualized Program

The Integrative Health Research Fellowship Program has attracted fellows from a variety of backgrounds. Some are practitioners who want to enter research or academia, while others are already in academia but want shift direction or advance their career. “The mentorship and training isn’t one-size-fits-all, but really focuses on the individual researcher and helping develop them in ways that allow them to meaningfully contribute to the team’s projects,” said Kennedy, who credits the program’s close mentorship and professional development focus for a recent NIH award he received for his community engagement work. “One-on-one meetings complement the hands-on experience of working on the project.”

It’s not uncommon for the mentors themselves to grow through the process — Evans said she has learned something new from all of the program’s mentees. Kennedy, for example, helped sow the seeds for Evans and the broader IHWRP team to branch out into the community-engaged research space. Now Evans, Kennedy, and Leininger all work closely together on Partners4Pain, a community-based research project that aims to help people from groups that experience health disparities gain access to evidence-based approaches for managing back or neck pain.

For Leininger, the fellowship program provided crucial experience crafting a research study, covering everything from recruitment protocols to data collection.

“Through the training in the fellowship program, I was able to substantively contribute to all aspects of the design and implementation for randomized trials,” he said. “These experiences prepared me to take a leadership role in two large NIH-funded projects as a co-principal investigator with my mentors in a relatively short time span.”

Looking forward, Evans said she plans to expand training opportunities in the program that focus on advancing health equity in pain management — an important area that currently receives too little attention. She also sees opportunities for past participants of the program to pay it forward to new fellows.

“I’m really excited for our former mentees to play a role in mentoring new and junior mentees,” she said. “We have some nice examples already of this taking place and I think it will only make the program better as we do more of it.”