Notre Dame of Maryland University became the nation’s first comprehensive university with a school solely dedicated to integrative health on its campus, with the announcement Sept. 3 of a merger with the former Maryland University of Integrative Health.
Dr. Mary Lou Yam, NDMU president, made the announcement of the establishment of the School of Integrative Health at an event on the north Baltimore campus,
MUIH was founded in 1974 as the Centre for Traditional Acupuncture, changing its name in 1978 to the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in 1978, and then became the Tai Sophia Institute in 2000. In 2013, it attained university status from the Maryland Higher Education Commission and changed its name again to the Maryland University of Integrative Health.
Integrative health is commonly defined as the coordinated use of multiple health approaches in health care, and it also describes a holistic perspective of what it is to be healthy, according to the NDMU SOIH website. The completion of this merger marks the first time in more than 50 years that two accredited private higher education institutions have merged in Maryland, Yam said.
“With this merger, having conventional and integrative health programs alongside one another provides opportunities for interprofessional collaboration among faculty to advance the scholarship, research and practice of holistic healthcare,” she said.
The SOIH will add 17 primarily online graduate-level degrees and post-baccalaureate certificates in programs including nutrition, health and wellness, coaching, health promotion, herbal medicine, integrative health studies, Ayurveda (a traditional Indian practice of holistic medicine) and yoga therapy.
“These programs complement Notre Dame’s already robust offerings in conventional healthcare programs such as nursing, pharmacy, occupational therapy, radiologic technology, physician assistant, as well as Maryland’s first bachelor’s and master’s programs in art therapy,” Yam said. She noted that the SOIH will incorporate more than 500 former MUIH students, boosting NDMU’s graduate student enrollment by 50 percent.
Dr. Sanjay Rai, secretary of Higher Education Commission for the State of Maryland, noted that his staff coordinated with the two universities to ensure the merger complied with regulations.
“The use of integrative health practices across the U.S. has grown significantly over the last several years. This is why we believe that both institutions and the entire State of Maryland will benefit from them coming together,” he said.
Rai added that the new school can serve as a model for other such cooperative efforts around the country and solidifies Maryland’s role as a leader and innovator in the healthcare industry.
Additional civic leaders representing the city, county and state attended the event.
Dr. James Snow, formerly of MUIH and a doctor of clinical nutrition, will be a professor and chairman of the Nutrition and Herbal Medicine Department in the new School of Integrative Health.
He cited a 2024 report from the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that the use of complementary health approaches by the U.S. adult population almost doubled from 19 percent to 37 percent between 2002 and 2022. Yoga use tripled in that time from 5 percent to 16 percent and of those practicing yoga, the percentage used specifically for pain management increased from 11 percent to 29 percent, indicating the evolving ways in which complementary health approaches are being applied.
He said that as MUIH joins NDMU as a School of Integrated Health, “I believe I can speak for the faculty and students in saying how excited we are to see how the principles and practices of our fields intersect with those already taught at NDMU.”
Snow added that nutrition and medicine programs will explore drug-induced nutrient depletions and the benefits and potential risks of herb nutrient drug interactions. “Discussing these topics with the students and faculty of the School of Pharmacy will expand perspectives and help deepen the conversation,” he said.
Juliana Terreza, a Catholic originally from New Jersey, in her second year of pharmacy school at NDMU, attended the event. Afterward, she told the Catholic Review, “I think we’re moving in the right direction. I think understanding the human body is a lot of how things interact.
“It takes time and more research, but I think a holistic approach is something very needed in society to truly understand how all the mechanisms work with each other. And it’s not just healing the body, it’s healing the mind and the spirit,” she said.
“For me, it’s more understanding the holistic side of it and the positives to it as I don’t know much yet about it. And like herbal medicine, acupuncture and all of these things that have been in our societies for a very long time … they’re becoming more mainstream,” Terreza said.
She said she looks forward to one-to-one conversations with patients to discuss their medicine regimen in a holistic way.
School Sister of Notre Dame Charmaine Krohe represents the religious order to NDMU, which it founded. As chairwoman of the corporate board and a member of the university’s board of trustees, she said the collaboration established between NDMU and MUIH to create the School of Integrative Health provides students the best and most innovative education opportunities, complementing the pharmacy and nursing programs already in place.
“Changes are necessary. Looking at the way the School of Integrated Health operates provides us another opportunity to look at health situations in a different way and to be able to have this and to be able to learn with the students,” Sister Charmaine said.
“It’s all inclusive. We’ve begun to widen the circle with our health ideas going forward,” she said.
Kevin J. Parks contributed to this report.
Email Christopher Gunty at editor@CatholicReview.org.
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