Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development (C-MIIND)

The Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development (C-MIIND) was established in May 2017 at the University of Utah with the following mission: to develop, test, optimize, and disseminate mindfulness and other integrative health interventions by translating discoveries from basic biobehavioral science into solutions for health and society. The Center currently has a research budget of more than $25 million in federal research grants.

The Center will exert a transformative influence on healthcare by unifying and synergizing disparate research efforts focused on the study of mindfulness and other integrative behavioral health interventions. The Center will maintain a program of funded research on mindfulness and integrative behavioral health approaches that advances science and supports clinical services at the University of Utah and across the nation. Though the home of the Center will reside in the College of Social Work, the Center will draw upon a broad base of expertise across campus and around the nation, including Center members and affiliates in Psychiatry, Primary Care, Anesthesiology, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Health, among others.

As a platform for supporting research, the Center on Mindfulness and Integrative Health Intervention Development (C-MIIND) will connect researchers and clinicians from across the behavioral and health sciences to conduct pioneering investigations of integrative interventions that target cognitive, emotional, and social processes to improve physical and mental health. Following the NIH Stage model, the Center will conduct translational biobehavioral research to inform the treatment development process by integrating knowledge about basic mechanisms underlying health problems into new therapeutic application.

In addition, the Center will promote an integrative behavioral health workforce to meet the needs of the University, the State, and the Nation by providing training in the evidence-based practice of mindfulness and other integrative behavioral health approaches. Center members will develop, test, refine, and optimize integrative behavioral health interventions for implementation and dissemination to health care providers. Intervention programs and training materials will be vetted through rigorous science, ensuring the highest quality delivery of empirically-supported integrative therapies. In this way, the Center will serve as a key hub of training in integrative behavioral health for the Intermountain West, drawing graduate students and post-graduate-level clinical providers from around the country seeking training in new, efficacious treatment modalities. The Center will train these clinicians to provide integrative behavioral health interventions in primary care clinics, hospitals, community mental health centers, addiction treatment facilities, etc. to complement and augment traditional healthcare approaches.

Lastly, the Center will attract top faculty and students to the University of Utah from around the Nation who are interested in studying mindfulness and integrative behavioral health. The Center will provide research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as post-doctoral fellows, by connecting these studies to ongoing funded and pilot research projects. Working under the tutelage of skilled Principal Investigators, students will learn how to conduct and disseminate rigorous integrative-behavioral health research and mind-body science. Alumni of the Center will maintain strong ties as their careers progress, retaining access to the latest scientific discoveries and interventions emerging from the Center, along with opportunities to participate in the development of others through mentoring and ongoing collaboration with the Center. In this way, the Center will foster uniquely valuable, enduring relationships between accomplished and aspiring leaders and will support an active, vibrant community of scholars and clinical scientists across the best universities of the world and in national scientific institutes.

Ultimately, the Center will advance a vision of a new model of healthcare, in which behavioral health experts work in tandem with medical providers to address the physical, psychological, and social needs of people afflicted by an array of disorders and illnesses. The synergy generated by such integrative efforts will alleviate suffering and promote human flourishing to a degree unrealized in previous eras of health care reforms.