For fourth-year medical student Emma Kossover, a recent two-week clinical elective in functional medicine at KU Wichita Functional Medicine Clinic “opened up this whole different side of medicine that is important and emerging.”

This year, KU School of Medicine-Wichita became just the third medical school in the U.S. to offer a functional medicine elective, where students can gain experience in using a system-based approach to find root causes of a patient’s chronic disease. The elective is open to KU fourth-years and visiting med students.

Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine and Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California are the other two medical schools offering a functional medicine elective rotation, according to Jennifer Jackson, M.D., FACP, an associate professor and director of the residency program in the KUSM-Wichita Department of Internal Medicine. Jackson founded the functional medicine clinic in 2018.

“Instead of focusing on naming a disease and treating just the symptoms, a functional provider seeks the triggers and mediators of symptoms to work on foundations of recovery,” Jackson said.

That concept is what brought Kossover, the first student to take the elective at KUSM-Wichita, back to her hometown. A Wichita State alumna, Kossover is a student at A.T. Still University, an osteopathic medical school in Kirksville, Missouri.

“The idea of functional medicine being very patient-centered and big-picture medicine to help people live happy, healthier lives” resonated with Kossover. “It’s a different way of thinking and there’s no harm in having another tool in your tool belt.”

Working with Jackson and Melissa Bailey, APRN, FNP-C, Kossover estimates that during her two-week rotation she participated in seeing about seven patients a day, with many of them dealing with severe chronic conditions.

“Going into the elective, I thought it was going to be people who are already pretty healthy and they’re wanting to optimize their health, but I learned through this rotation that these were people with serious or higher-risk medical conditions,” Kossover said.

She was impressed with how functional medicine can work in tandem with traditional medicine.

“I think there’s another misconception that functional medicine doctors are against traditional medicine and that’s not the case at all,” Kossover said. “Dr. Jackson did a really great job working with other providers and with the medications patients need to be on. She was really good at … how you can look at patients from a functional medicine perspective. It’s more of a holistic approach, looking at nutrition, exercise, sleep and other core values.”

During one of those clinical visits, for example, Kossover heard firsthand from a patient about how changes in their diet have helped reduce their pain and inflammation.

In treating patients at the KU Wichita Functional Medicine Clinic, which has a three- to four-month waiting period for new patients, Jackson draws on both her many years of practicing internal medicine and her own study of functional medicine through the Cleveland Clinic. She earned her functional medicine certification in 2018.

“I did that on top of my duties because it was something I felt really passionate about and wanted to offer a different model of care,” Jackson said.

Kossover’s rotation was helpful for Jackson as well.

“She gave really good feedback to help shape the experience for the next student,” Jackson said.

Eventually, Jackson would like to offer training and certification in functional medicine to resident physicians.

Before doing the two-week rotation in the KU Wichita Functional Medicine Clinic, Kossover did a sub-internship with the KUSM-Wichita internal medicine program, which is one of the residency programs she has applied to.