Cochrane Complementary Medicine Field Director L. Susan Wieland Brings Systematic Review Expertise to Georgetown
Georgetown University has long a been a leading institution in integrative medicine, with a Master of Science program teaching future medical professionals about the intersections between conventional biomedicine and traditional and complementary practices around the world. Starting this academic year, the university’s integrative medicine and whole person health prowess is augmented by a closer relationship with another early adopter: Cochrane Complementary Medicine, a member group of the international systematic review organization the Cochrane Collaboration.
L. Susan Wieland
Students are benefiting from new course content, internship possibilities, and the insightful expertise of Adjunct Professor L. Susan Wieland, director of the Cochrane Complementary Medicine Field, who joined Georgetown in fall 2025.
As a Cochrane field director since 2022, Wieland provides support to the production and dissemination of Cochrane systematic reviews in complementary and integrative medicine, which assess studies from around the world to draw actionable conclusions.
Wieland explained: “A systematic review is a structured way of looking at a research question and being very transparent and thorough about getting all the evidence, assessing the evidence – is this a good study or not? Do we trust it? And then combining, synthesizing all the evidence using a meta-analysis, which is a statistical tool, if the data is available to do that, and then presenting your findings, together with an indication of how certain the findings are.”
Through news releases and interviews, journal columns, educational modules, and collaborations with groups such as the World Health Organization (WHO), Wieland and fellow Cochrane researchers are dedicated to communicating their findings to make an impact in health care decision-making and policy. The WHO tapped Dr. Wieland in 2022 to advise on its initiatives in traditional medicine, and in 2025 she was named co-chair of the first WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine.
“Dissemination and interpretation is crucial,” Wieland said. “Taking the Cochrane reviews, summarizing them for clinicians, for the public, and getting that information out there … and then also contributing to advancing research methods in a complex field such as integrative medicine.”
Expanding Opportunities for Students
Wieland’s connection to Georgetown grew as the university came to be a hub for integrative medicine and health sciences education. Georgetown was one of the first institutions to join the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine & Health in early 2000. Professors Hakima Amri and Aviad Haramati, who would go on to start the Integrative Medicine & Health Sciences master’s program in 2003, were “very prominent in the field, so I was very familiar with them,” Wieland said.
Amri invited Wieland to give a seminar to students in 2019, after which Wieland asked her to contribute to a systematic review on Ginkgo biloba, a popular medicinal plant which Amri has studied since the mid-1990s. The two collaborated on one of the most comprehensive systematic reviews to date on Ginkgo biloba for dementia and cognitive impairment, encompassing 82 studies with more than 10,000 participants.
Since 2019, Wieland has returned to the Hilltop each fall to give a guest lecture on evidence-based medicine. In the summer, she has offered internships for Integrative Medicine & Health Sciences master’s students.
Wieland also plans to continue offering Cochrane-related internships to Georgetown students. Past interns include students planning to get a research-focused Ph.D., as well as med students interested in the systematic reviews they read as part of their studies, Amri said.
“They learn with [Wieland] how to approach a research question, how to formulate the hypothesis, how to look for the literature that supports the hypothesis, and assess the quality of the papers that are out there and above all, identify the challenges of designing sound clinical trials, especially in the field of integrative medicine, ” Amri explained.
Now that Wieland is an adjunct professor, she has contributed new content to the required Integrative Medicine & Health Sciences course “Assessing the Evidence in Complementary and Integrative Medicine.” Wieland said: “I’m going to be doing a deep dive, first of all, into some research methods that the students will be encountering, observational studies, and the pros and cons of different types, and how to assess them and how to understand them. And then I’m going to go into specific topics that they would not yet have encountered in the first semester – things like certainty of the evidence and GRADE, network meta-analysis, all things that are happening today that people need to be acquainted with. … And then I’m going to go into some specific research methods for integrative medicine, things like whole systems research, complex interventions, N-of-1 studies, and I’m hoping to also get some good speakers in.”
“One of the things I’m very excited about with Georgetown is the ability to interact with students and really get them on board with different study designs and approaches to evidence,” Wieland said.
Integrative Medicine and Health Sciences at Georgetown
More BGE News
Alumni, Faculty, News
Hannah Tytus (G’23) spoke to Integrative Medicine & Health Sciences Director Hakima Amri for a Natural Awakenings magazine article on taking a holistic and evidence-informed approach to health care.
December 31, 2025
News
For decades, BGE has taught graduate students about the intersections between biomedicine and alternative health practices. Now, Integrative Medicine & Health Sciences Director Hakima Amri is working with the Institute for Natural Medicine and MedStar Health to create a three-part digital continuing medical education (CME) course to teach clinicians to incorporate evidence-based whole-person healthcare strategies into everyday practice.
December 19, 2025