Fourth-year medical students at KU School of Medicine in Kansas City, Wichita and Salina now have the opportunity to take a clinical elective in functional medicine, an option previously available at just two other medical education campuses in the country, according to Jennifer Jackson, M.D., FACP, associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine.

Up until now, only Cleveland Clinic, which offers the elective rotation through its Center for Functional Medicine, and Loma Linda University School of Medicine in California have offered a functional medicine elective rotation, said Jackson, who founded the KU Wichita Functional Medicine Clinic in 2018.

“I have a student from Utah, who is native to Wichita, coming to rotate with me in October,” Jackson added.

Medical students who take the elective will have an opportunity to study a “different approach to chronic disease treatment,” said Jackson, who joined the internal medicine department in 2010 after a seven-year tenure as a general internist in Pratt, Kansas.

“Functional medicine uses a system-based approach to identify root causes of chronic disease to try and improve symptoms and reverse disease progression. Instead of a focus 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.”

Students can choose to do either a two-week or four-week rotation in functional medicine, Jackson explained, both of which include mornings spent on didactic learning and afternoons spent in the Functional Medicine Clinic. Students who choose the four-week rotation will have the added requirement of completing a case study.

For Jackson, who completed her internal medicine residency at KU School of Medicine-Wichita and spent several years practicing traditional internal medicine, the opportunity to offer the elective has been nearly a decade in the making.

It started with her own study of functional medicine in 2015 through the Cleveland Clinic’s Institute for Functional Medicine.

“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, who is the internal medicine department’s chief hospitalist and was recently promoted to the director of the internal medicine residency program after spending 11 years as the associate director.

After completing her functional medicine certification in 2018, Jackson set up the KU Wichita Functional Medicine Clinic. The clinic now includes a full-time nurse practitioner; Jackson hopes to add a full-time physician to the clinic, which has a three- to four-month waiting period for new patients.

She also started doing lectures to introduce functional medicine concepts to both students and residents.

Adding the clinical rotation is the logical next step, Jackson said.

"Once we have more staff,” she said, “we hope to offer training and certification in functional medicine to our resident physicians."

Donations to continue growing the functional medicine program, may be made online.

Jackson named residency program’s first female director

After spending 11 years as the associate program director for the KU School of Medicine-Wichita Internal Medicine Residency Program, Jennifer Jackson, M.D., FACP, is the program’s new director, taking over from William Salyers Jr., M.D., MPH, FACP.

Jackson, who joined the KU School of Medicine-Wichita internal medicine faculty in 2010 and also leads the department’s functional medicine program, is the first female director of the residency program.

“We have fabulous faculty and excellent residents,” said Jackson of the program. “We have a reputation of excellence and creating really, really superior internists so I think we're doing a lot of things right. It's just a matter of continuing those relationships and looking for opportunities to fine-tune and tweak the program … and now it’s my watch.”

A Rose Hill, Kansas, native, Jackson completed her final two years of medical school and her internal medicine residency at KU School of Medicine-Wichita. After practicing as a general internist in Pratt, Kansas, for seven years, she joined the internal medicine faculty in 2010 and founded the KU Functional Medicine Clinic in 2019.

Salyers will continue as the internal medicine department chair and division chief of gastroenterology.

Fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education program, the internal medicine residency program accepts 13 residents each year into the three-year program. Additionally, six residents are accepted into the program’s one-year preliminary medicine training; the training is required for certain advanced specialties.