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“Principles and Practices of Alternative and Complementary Medicine” is a popular survey course offered as an elective to students and faculty from the schools of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Public Health. Each week, students learn about different CAM and integrative therapies from expert practitioners and patients. Well-known modalities such as yoga, acupuncture, and osteopathy are presented, along with more uncommon modalities like energy healing, indigenous practices of the South, and patient perspectives on healing.

“Fieldwork in Alternative and Complementary Therapies” (PMED 452) is a 4th year elective for medical students interested in in-depth exploration of complementary, alternative and integrative medicine in an individualized one-month rotation.

For more information about this course, fieldwork, electives, internships, or other educational opportunities, contact Program Director, Dr. Susan Gaylord, at gaylords@med.unc.edu.

Faculty Director: Susan Gaylord, PhD (gaylords@med.unc.edu)
Assistant Director: Daniel Gallego Perez, MD, DrPH (dfgp@email.unc.edu)
Course Coordinator: Kelly Eason (kelly_eason@med.unc.edu) (919) 966-8586


The Immunology of Autoimmune Disease, Inflammation and Chronic Infection:
A Research-Based Functional Medicine Perspective

This 4-week course is taught by Dr. Sam Yanuck, whose functional medicine practice focuses on the care of patients with autoimmune disease and other chronic illnesses.

  • Geared towards clinicians and medical students, others by permission.
  • Expand your repertoire of clinical tools to deal more effectively with patients who have complex autoimmune diseases, chronic infections and other chronic illnesses.
  • Highly research oriented. Focused on identifying appropriate physiological targets and choosing appropriate tools with which to address them. Diagnostic and therapeutic topics are discussed in the language of physiology. Power point driven, with virtually slide a quotation or diagram from a peer reviewed study in the medical literature.
  • Focus is “additional tools that are compatible with what you’re already doing” rather than “use this instead of a conventional approach”.
  • Includes functional medicine misconceptions for you and your patients to avoid.

Session 1 – Chronic tissue inflammation & underlying immunological drivers This session teaches you the immunology of tissue inflammation and how to apply functional medicine tools to change tissue chemistry in chronically inflamed patients.


Session 2 Immunology of vulnerability to infectious disease
This session focuses on 1) inflammation as a promoter of chronic infection, 2) patterns of T cell polarization as predictors of vulnerability, and 3) the immunology of vulnerability to infection in the geriatric population. Includes detailed discussion of functional medicine treatment tools.


Session 3 – Autoimmune Disease Part 1
Using a functional medicine framework, this session teaches you to identify the unique set of factors driving each patient’s autoimmune process, identify appropriate clinical targets, apply best-matched treatment tools, and assess ongoing progress.


Session 4 – Autoimmune Disease Part 2
This session teaches you a functional medicine approach to managing patterns of dysfunction common in patients whose cases are complex or resistant to typical treatment approaches.