December 22, 2011 — The University of Western States (UWS) recently announced a new graduate degree program starting in April 2012 — the Master of Science in Nutrition and Functional Medicine.
The program will be offered in nearly all of its entirety online and represents a unique collaborative endeavor between a regionally accredited university (UWS) and educational material licensed from the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), the organization which founded and has developed the key functional medicine concepts.
The program, led by clinician, researcher, author, and international lecturer Alex Vasquez, DC, ND, DO, will be delivered in a distance-learning format using the university’s online learning management system; four of the required credits and up to four of the elective credits will be provided by IFM.
The program consists of 50 quarter-credits of graduate coursework (33 semester credits), and it integrates standard clinical nutrition subject material with the systems biology approach of functional medicine. Indeed, the key distinguishing feature of this new degree program is the presentation of a standard clinical nutrition curriculum within the conceptual context of the functional medicine model, which includes important interdisciplinary and evidence-based perspectives, patient assessments, and clinical interventions.
Given the rapid advancements in the field of clinical nutrition and the increasingly appreciated role of nutrition in the maintenance of health and the prevention of diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes mellitus, the delivery of a clinical nutrition degree with functional medicine perspectives, assessments, and interventions gives graduates of the UWS Master of Science in Nutrition and Functional Medicine program clear educational and professional advantages.
Source: University of Western States, www.uws.edu
