May 2002

Northwestern Health Sciences University
Creates Health and Wellness Institute

Bloomington, Minn. - Northwestern Health Sciences University has taken another step forward toward its goal of improving peoples health through natural approaches.

"The university has created The Institute for Health and Wellness to help people make informed decisions about their lifestyles, promote collaboration among all health-care professionals and provide open health-care forums," said Dr. Stephen Bolles, co-founder of the institute.

"The institute wants to change the public"s perception of healthcare, focus more on prevention rather than acute care, and to seek natural care first," said Debbie Miller, director of the institute at Northwestern. "Not only do we want to focus on the patient, we realize that a lot of healthcare starts with the primary physician."

"The values of Northwestern go hand-in-hand with the values and goals of the institute," said Dr. Alfred Traina, president of the university.

"Northwestern benefits from being a part of this wave in patient care," Traina said. "The students benefit from having a wide variety of hands-on experience, and the community knows more of who we are and what we do."

The institute is working to develop relationships with other health-care organizations to provide certain clinical services to patients and clients in collaborative environments. One example of this is the invitation to provide acupuncture and massage clinical services to breast cancer patients at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood, Minn.

"These patients will receive the benefits of natural care that support the medical services they are already receiving in an effort to measurably improve their clinical outcomes, sense of well-being and quality of life," Miller said.

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