The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has announced the creation of a new NCCAM director's fellowship in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research.
The new fellowship program will add to NCCAM's ongoing training activities by sponsoring 'outstanding' research fellows to work in its Division of Intramural Research (DIR), based at the NIH in Bethesda, MD, NCCAM said in a statement earlier today.
A selection committee will choose the recipient of the fellowship from an international pool of applicants who, it notes, must possess an M.D., D.O., Ph.D., D.C., D.M.D., N.D., D.V.M., or other equivalent degree, and have a record of excellence and promise in clinical and/or laboratory-based research, preferably related to CAM.
Stephen E. Straus, NCCAM director said the aim of the fellowship was to enable NCCAM to recruit and train the next generation of leaders in CAM research.
The training program has been designed to prepare the fellow for a career as an independent CAM investigator. As such the center says the fellow will be expected to undertake clinical, translational, and/or laboratory research in NCCAM's DIR - which provides research facilities as well as access to the clinical research infrastructure of the NIH Clinical Center.
Marc R. Blackman, scientific director of the DIR at NCCAM was keen to point out, however, that the NCCAM continues to recruit and support research fellows to the DIR through traditional NIH and non-NIH funding mechanisms.
The new fellowship has been created following a donation from the Prince of Wales Foundation, which distributes funding each year to a wide range of causes throughout the world, including supporting research in CAM and integrative health care.
The deadline for receipt of applications is 24 November, 2003. For more information about the fellowship, contact: Christopher Baron, Human Resources Specialist, NIH.