While a certain percentage of medical doctors and doctors of chiropractic continue to seem inclined to keep the professions at odds with one another, Matthew Kowalski, DC’s career is a timeline of milestones that reflect collaboration between medicine and chiropractic.
Dr. Kowalski, a 1990 graduate of National College of Chiropractic, was the first DC to bring chiropractic to a Massachusetts hospital (way back in 1992);* serves as associate clinical director at the Osher Clinical Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly based at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School (HMS); and co-founded the first chiropractic research fellowship at the Osher Center (with Peter Wayne, PhD, who currently directs the center). Add to all that his recent appointment as an instructor at HMS.
The historic appointment for Dr. Kowalski is another step toward what the Osher Center describes as the focus of his career: "integrating chiropractic treatment and education with the medical professions."
The Osher Center for Integrative Medicine is part of the Osher Collaborative for Integrative Health, a seven-center collaborative funded by the Bernard Osher Foundation "to study, teach, and practice integrative medicine." In addition to Harvard Medical School (endowed in 2001), other academic sites include the University of California, San Francisco (the first school to be endowed, in 1998); Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden, 2005); Northwestern University (2014); Vanderbilt University (2014); the University of Miami (2017); the University of Washington (2018); the University of Cincinnati (2021); the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2021); the University of Utah (2022); and the University of Vermont (2022).
*Ironically, 1992 – the year Dr. Kowalski became the first chiropractor to integrate chiropractic into a Massachusetts hospital – was also the year the American Medical Association was forced (as part of the Wilk v AMA settlement) to publish the permanent injunction order against the AMA, revised AMA opinion on chiropractors, and lead attorney for the plaintiff George McAndrews' 1,996-word essay in the association's American Medical News.
Editor's Note: Read Dr. Kowalski's article in the July 16, 2007 issue of Dynamic Chiropractic for advice that reflects his career focus and remains relevant to chiropractors today: "How to Build Your Interdisciplinary Care Network." https://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=52248
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