2024 Virtual Exhibit Hall

Ariana Thompson-Lastad, PhD is an Assistant Professor at the University of California San Francisco, in the Osher Center for Integrative Health and the Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Thompson-Lastad is trained as a medical sociologist and conducts qualitative and community-engaged research focused on the role of integrative healthcare in advancing health equity. Her work primarily examines innovative approaches to primary care, including integrative group medical visits implemented in US community health centers and the community midwifery model of postpartum care. Dr. Thompson-Lastad is currently a board member of Integrative Medicine for the Underserved. Prior to becoming a researcher, Dr. Thompson-Lastad worked in a community health center as a diabetes care coordinator and group medical visit facilitator.

Nadine Ijaz, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. Professor Ijaz’s interdisciplinary research draws on the fields of medical sociology and anthropology, (postcolonial feminist) science and technology studies, and critical policy studies. Her award-winning studies on traditional, complementary and integrative medicine practitioners draw attention to questions of epistemology, evidence, accessibility, risk discourse, and cultural misappropriation – including in the policy sphere. Professor Ijaz is President-Elect of ISCMR (International Society for Traditional, Complementary & Integrative Medicine Research). Prior to her academic career, she worked for fifteen years as a medical herbalist, nutritional consultant, and shiatsu therapist.

Isabel Roth, DrPh is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine (UNC). Her research interests involve the identification of effective implementation strategies to promote access to evidence-based complementary and integrative health practices among diverse populations. She is currently chair of the American Public Health Association’s Integrative, Complementary, and Traditional Health Practices Section. She holds a doctorate in Public Health from the University of Texas Health Center at Houston, and completed postdoctoral training in complementary and integrative health at UNC. Currently, she is working on a career development award funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health entitled “Scaling-Up Integrative Pain Management in Federally Qualified Health Centers.

Eric B. Loucks, PhD is a professor, researcher, and innovator in the study of mindfulness and health. He serves as Director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown University. Dr. Loucks is the developer of the Mindfulness-Based College for Young Adults (MB-College) program and the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP) program, both that have been evaluated in NIH-funded randomized controlled trials. His research also focuses on mindfulness epidemiology methods, and implementation science. Over the course of his career, he has held teaching positions at Harvard, McGill, and Brown Universities. Dr. Loucks’s work has been widely distributed through media organizations such as the New York Times, TIME Magazine, and the BBC, along with numerous presentations to national and state governmental bodies.