Dr. Eric Roseen
Assistant Professor, Section of General Internal Medicine | Director, Program for Integrative Medicine and Health Disparities | Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center
After growing up in North Dakota, Eric earned a bachelor’s degree from Minnesota State University. He graduated from the University of Western States in 2011. Currently, Eric resides in Massachusetts where he is a researcher and clinician with the Family Medicine Department at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine.
From his nominator, Dr. Stephanie Holloran: He is involved with multiple ongoing research projects within BMC’s Program for Integrative Medicine and Health Care Disparities including a large RCT comparing yoga, physical therapy and patient education for chronic non-specific low back pain in a low-income minority population. Dr. Roseen has continued to push the boundaries on the roles chiropractor can have within the healthcare system, recently opening a chiropractic clinic at Boston Medical Center, training students of various backgrounds, and continuing to expand his own knowledge as one of the CARL II Fellows. Dr. Roseen embodies everything that chiropractor can be, and he does it in a way that facilitates more doors being open to new generations and is ready and willing to mentor colleagues to do the same. The combination of clinical work, integration into a large hospital system, relevant and timely research into whole-person care in underserved populations, and genuine desire to show-up and continue to do work in area that are less explored by chiropractors, makes Dr. Roseen the ideal candidate for Alumni of the Year.
Dr. Lauren Castle
Doctor of Pharmacy degree from Ohio Northern University | Master of Science in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine from the University of Western States | Lauren has also studied with the Institute for Functional Medicine and the School of Applied Functional Medicine, becoming an Applied Functional Medicine Certified (AFMC) practitioner in 2022.
What made you decide to attend UWS?
After discovering functional medicine in 2015 through my husband’s own life-changing health journey, I was convinced that functional medicine was the future of healthcare. It was something that I wanted to be able to implement with my own patients, as well as teach every pharmacist I knew, so I began my search for the right training program. At the time, I was still working as a retail pharmacist for a large chain, so travel was not an option; it needed to be fully remote. I had also been considering enrolling in an MBA or MPH program to further differentiate myself within the pharmacy profession, so when I came across the Master of Science in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine program, I knew I had found the perfect solution. I wanted a program that was more than just a certification or more letters behind my name; one that would give me a deeply scientific understanding of functional medicine and position me as an expert in this emerging field. The fact that UWS was a top-ranking, regionally accredited university with a rich 100+ year history of excellence gave me even more confidence that this would be a rigorous program that my peers in the conventional medicine field would respect as well.
What does being named an Alumnus of the Year mean to you?
Being named Alumnus of the Year is an incredible honor, and I’m truly proud to represent the profession of pharmacy. Pharmacists tend to be the “unsung heroes” of healthcare, but day by day the impact and influence of their role is growing. At the same time, we recognize that “a pill for every ill” is not the solution to the chronic disease epidemic, and that functional medicine is a more viable path. It’s my hope that in receiving this recognition, it will highlight and accelerate the collaborative work that we are doing within Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance to make functional medicine the standard of care through pharmacist-led clinical services.
What do you love about your current role?
If you would have told me in 2013 when I graduated pharmacy school, or even 2016 when I began my program at UWS, that one day my full time job would be serving as the Founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Alliance, leading a movement of over 4,000 pharmacists, I don’t think I would have believed it! But hindsight is 20/20, and I can clearly see now how each step in this 10+ year journey has led me to this point. FMPhA got its start as an online networking group in 2017, where I could stay in touch with pharmacists that I met through my functional medicine speaking engagements at state pharmacist association meetings. I also began blogging about functional medicine and how to get started in this growing field. The group grew from just 30 members in 2017 to over 4,000 pharmacists today. In 2020, we launched our official membership program, as well as partnership with organizations like the Institute for Functional Medicine and the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. In 2023, we launched our flagship training course, the Functional Medicine Pharmacists Bootcamp. What I love most about my work is knowing that we are truly changing healthcare, one pharmacist, one practitioner, one organizational partnership, and one patient at a time.
