David Scott Jones, MD

In support of this, Dr. Jones’ project addressed three parallel activities:

Content Development and Organization. Dr. Jones devised a useful meta-system for organizing and integrating knowledge about the physiological functions of organ systems and cells into a coherent structure with practical clinical applications.

Achieving Therapeutic Partnerships and Healing Relationships. Dr. Jones investigated the underlying processes involved in establishing a healing relationship in the physician-patient partnership.

Improving Teaching and Learning. Dr. Jones investigated innovative teaching/learning methodologies appropriate to today’s continuing medical education environment to improve mastery of new clinical practices.

Dr. Jones’ three years with the Institute for Integrative Health’s Scholars Program had a significant effect on all educational activities at The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM), where Jones is president emeritus. The changes in content development and organization of IFM’s training programs now have the evidence-based underpinning that supports the importance of the healing partnership as a cornerstone in IFM’s educational programs. More than 100,000 practitioners from 75 countries have now been introduced to the principles and practice of functional medicine through the educational programs at IFM.

The Institute for Functional Medicine’s Functional Medicine Matrix Model™ of comprehensive care and primary prevention for complex, chronic illnesses is grounded in science (evidence about common underlying mechanisms and pathways of disease; evidence about effective approaches to the environmental and lifestyle sources of disease). On an equal footing, the IFM’s educational programs now teach the science of the art of medicine: the therapeutic partnership and the search for insight within the healing relationship. These two cornerstones of clinical medicine—science and art—have now been integrated into IFM’s teaching and clinical practice in order to achieve a more effective response to patients’ needs, rooted in ethical concerns for dignity, respect, and healing.

Without the support of the Institute’s Scholar program, Dr. Jones says it is doubtful that both the theoretical and research basis for these breakthroughs in understanding or the actual operationalization of these concepts into translational clinical applications would have occurred.

IFM provides continuing medical education for physicians and other healthcare professionals. Educational activities focus on assessment and treatment of underlying causes of illness in order to maintain and restore health and improve function using a personalized approach. Dr. Jones has presided over a continuous quality improvement process that has made IFM’s educational programs the most sought after in the field of functional integrative medicine.

He is the past president of PrimeCare, the Independent Physician Association of Southern Oregon, where he served for seven years representing the majority of the 500+ physicians in the Southern Oregon area. He also served as chief of staff at the Ashland Community Hospital and president of the Southern Oregon Society of Preventive Medicine.

Dr. Jones is editor-in-chief and co-author of the Textbook of Functional Medicine, published in 2005 and 2010, and authored Healthy Changes, a patient-centered 16-week workbook that focuses on healthy habits. He was lead author of 21st CENTURY MEDICINE: A New Model for Medical Education and Practice.