Roberta Lee, MD is Medical Director of the Center for Health and Healing, Director of Continuing Medical Education and Co-Director of the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at Beth Israel’s Continuum Center for Health and Healing (CCHH). In addition, she conducts a clinical practice in Internal and Integrative medicine at CCHH. The Center is a multi-disciplinary clinic which includes a mixture of physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and Traditional Healers working together to provide integrative medical management with a special focus on the preventative aspects of health. She recently edited a text on integrative medicine, entitled Integrative Medicine: Principles for Practice, with her colleague Ben Kligler, MD, published by McGraw-Hill.

Dr. Lee is an Honorary Research Associate at The New York Botantical Garden in the Institute of Economic Botany. For the last five years she has traveled back to Micronesia as the ethnomedical specialist in an interdisciplinary team of biologists, ethnobotanists, ecologists and conservationists from The New York Botanical Garden, National Tropical Garden, Nature Conservancy and College of Micronesia. The collaborative effort is a ten year project. Her focus has been the traditional uses of kava, a plant important in the local culture, valued for its community building. Her research interests include studying a cross section of cultural and botanical influences on health, healing and promotion of wellness in chronic disease.

Dr. Lee attended medical school at George Washington University Medical School after completing her undergraduate training at the University of California at Berkeley. Following the completion of her residency in Internal Medicine, she served as a U.S. Public Health service physician in Micronesia for five years. She is one of the four graduates in the first class from the Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.

Dr. Lee lectures and writes on the uses of botanical medicine and integrative approaches to a variety of medical conditions. She has served as a member on the ad hoc Botanical Advisory Committee for U.S. Pharmacoepoeia and is a medical advisor for the Herbalist Guild. Currently she is regular contributing editor to EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and healing in a column entitled Notes from the Field, consulting editor for Herbclip a botanical news letter from the American Botanical Council and an Advisory Board Member for the American Botanical Council.

Content last modified on Jul 6, 2006