Update on Josephine Briggs and the NCCAM

Quick context: If you Googled “NCCAM” and felt like the internet just gaslit younope, you’re not losing it. NCCAM (the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) is the former name of what’s now called NCCIH (the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health). Same NIH home base, updated name, and a steadily evolving research playbook.

This article is a clear, current update on (1) Dr. Josephine P. Briggsone of the most important leaders in NCCAM/NCCIH historyand (2) what the center looks like today, including the most recent leadership changes and research priorities. We’ll keep it evidence-forward, jargon-light, and only mildly sarcastic (the NIH would probably prefer “minimally sarcastic,” but here we are).

NCCAM vs. NCCIH: Same House, New Nameplate

NCCAM’s old name included the word “alternative,” which sounds bold and edgylike a leather jacket for medicine. But “alternative” also implies replacing conventional care, and that’s not how most people actually use these approaches. Most Americans who try meditation, yoga, acupuncture, supplements, or massage are doing it alongside standard medical treatment, not instead of it.

That reality helped drive the shift in language toward “integrative health,” which points to coordinated care: using complementary approaches when they’re safe and useful, and blending them with conventional care in a thoughtful way. The name change also came with a big message: this is research, not a free pass. “Natural” doesn’t automatically mean “effective,” “safe,” or “worth your money.”

So when you see NCCAM in older articles, reports, or citations, treat it like an older nickname. The work continues under NCCIH, with a stronger emphasis on rigorous science, real-world outcomes, and clearer communication for clinicians and the public.

Who Is Josephine Briggs, and Why Does She Matter Here?

Dr. Josephine P. Briggs is a nephrologist and physician-scientist who served as director of the NIH center from 2008 to 2017spanning the era when NCCAM matured into a more methodologically demanding research organization and then transitioned into the NCCIH identity.

Her reputation inside and outside NIH has long been tied to a specific vibe: curiosity, yescredulity, no. In other words, investigate what people are using, but demand the same scientific standards you’d apply anywhere else in biomedicine.

Before NCCAM: The “pragmatic science” background

Briggs didn’t come into NCCAM as a “woo evangelist.” She came in as a clinician and researcher with deep experience in mainstream biomedical science and research administration. Before leading NCCAM/NCCIH, she held major NIH leadership roles connected to kidney, urology, and hematology research and helped steer large-scale efforts focused on how medicine works in the real worldnot just in idealized settings.

That matters because complementary and integrative health is full of real-world complexity. People don’t take one supplement with one controlled diet and one perfectly tracked lifestyle variable. They do… whatever humans do: a little yoga, some melatonin, a magnesium gummy, a new sleep app, and a promise to “start Monday.” Studying that mess honestly requires strong methods and a willingness to design smarter trials.

2008–2014: Making “show me” the default setting

During Briggs’ early years as director, the center’s reputation increasingly hinged on two questions:

• What do people actually use? (Because popularity drives public health impact.)
• What does the evidence actually show? (Because popularity also drives expensive nonsense.)

Under her leadership, there was a visible push toward stronger clinical trial design, better measurement tools, and more careful interpretation of resultsespecially for interventions that are hard to “standardize,” like mindfulness training, yoga protocols, acupuncture approaches, or multicomponent lifestyle programs.

She also helped emphasize the value of studying safety and interactions. That’s not glamorous, but it’s where public health quietly lives. Supplements can interact with medications. “Natural” products can be contaminated or inconsistent. And some therapies are low-risk but not low-cost, which matters when people are spending real money chasing unclear benefits.

2014–2017: The NCCAM-to-NCCIH transition (and what it signaled)

The NCCAM → NCCIH rename wasn’t just a branding refresh. It was also a public statement about how the field was changing: integrative care was becoming more common in clinical settings, and the NIH center wanted to focus on research that could meaningfully inform decision-makingby clinicians, patients, and health systems.

In practical terms, the center’s identity tightened around:

• Methodological rigor (better controls, better outcomes, better reproducibility)
• Real-world relevance (studies that reflect how people actually use these approaches)
• Public-facing clarity (helping people interpret health claims without needing a PhD in Statistics)

Briggs also wrote and promoted guidance through blog posts and leadership communications that emphasized scientific curiosity while warning against turning “integrative” into a synonym for “unproven but vibes-based.” The subtext, politely translated, was: “Bring receipts.”

Where NCCIH Stands Now: The 2026 Snapshot

Fast-forward to today, and NCCIH remains the NIH’s lead agency for research on complementary and integrative health approachesstill focused on fundamental science, usefulness, safety, and how these approaches may fit into whole-person health.

Leadership update: A big change at the end of 2025

NCCIH entered 2026 during a leadership transition. Dr. Helene Langevinwho served as director starting in 2018 and strongly advanced the “whole person health” frameworkretired from federal service effective November 30, 2025. NIH announced that NCCIH Deputy Director Dr. David Shurtleff would serve as acting director.

Even more telling: NIH posted a director recruitment announcement with an application deadline in December 2025, describing the role as leading an organization with roughly a $170 million budget and wide-reaching responsibilities across multiple NIH initiatives. That’s not “we’ll get around to it”that’s “this seat matters.”

Funding and scale: Not the biggest NIH institute, not a rounding error either

NCCIH is relatively small compared with NIH heavyweights, but it has a meaningful footprint. Recent appropriations have been in the neighborhood of $170 million annually. That funding supports intramural work, extramural grants, training efforts, and public information resources.

And importantly, NCCIH’s influence is not only about its own grants. The center also helps coordinate work across NIH and with other federal partnersespecially on topics like pain, pragmatic trials, and health systems research.

What’s getting the most attention: Pain, whole person health, and real-world evidence

If you want the simplest “what’s hot” answer, it’s this: chronic pain and whole person health. Not because those topics are trendy, but because they’re enormous public health burdens where conventional care alone hasn’t solved the problem.

NCCIH has prioritized research on complementary and integrative approaches for painespecially approaches that can reduce symptom burden, improve function, and potentially reduce reliance on high-risk treatments when appropriate. This includes exploring biological mechanisms and testing interventions in pragmatic, real-world settings.

One example of NCCIH’s more mechanistic direction is work investigating the analgesic properties of minor cannabinoids and terpenesa sign the center is trying to sort pharmacology from hype in areas where the marketplace is moving faster than the evidence.

Meanwhile, “whole person health” is not just a slogan. It’s a framework that asks: how do systems interactimmune, nervous, endocrine, connective tissue, behavior, environmentand how do we measure “positive health” processes like resilience and restoration? NCCIH has been involved in work that aims to operationalize those ideas with research infrastructure and population-level measurement tools.

So… What’s Josephine Briggs Up to Now?

Briggs stepped down from the NCCIH directorship and retired from NIH in 2017. But she didn’t exactly ride off into the sunset carrying only a tote bag and a houseplant.

From NIH leadership to journal leadership

After leaving NIH, Briggs became editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), one of the most influential journals in kidney medicine. She served a six-year term and later stepped down at the end of 2023closing a chapter that blended her scientific credentials with her longtime interest in rigorous evidence and editorial standards.

This is a useful clue about her professional throughline: whether it’s complementary health research or kidney journals, her lane is still “how do we know what we know, and how do we keep the standards high?”

PCORI and patient-centered outcomes: Another form of “integrative” (the useful kind)

Briggs also took on a major leadership role with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), serving as interim executive director starting November 1, 2019. PCORI’s mission aligns with the part of Briggs’ NCCIH legacy that’s often overlooked: the insistence that evidence should match the decisions real people and clinicians face.

In other words, whether you’re studying acupuncture for chronic low back pain or comparing medication strategies in kidney disease, the question is still: does it help, for whom, under what conditions, with what risks and costs?

Public speaking and the “uncertainty” theme

More recently, Briggs has remained visible through academic talks and professional eventsoften leaning into a theme that’s refreshingly honest: medicine is full of uncertainty, and evidence-based practice isn’t about pretending we’re always sure. It’s about making better decisions with imperfect informationand updating those decisions when better evidence arrives.

What This “Update” Means for Patients and Clinicians

If you’re a clinician, the Briggs-to-now timeline offers a practical takeaway: NCCIH is most valuable when it helps separate three things that often get blended together:

• Approaches that are safe and helpful (with reasonable evidence)
• Approaches that are plausible but unproven (good targets for research, not guarantees)
• Approaches that are risky, ineffective, or oversold (especially when they replace effective care)

If you’re a patient, the value is even more day-to-day. The integrative health marketplace is loud. NCCIH’s jobwhen it’s doing its job wellis to be the calm friend who says, “Okay, but what does the research show, and how strong is it?”

That’s why NCCIH’s science literacy efforts matter. The center has tried to help the public read health headlines, interpret study quality, and understand why a single “miracle” study rarely means you should reorder your entire medicine cabinet.

Experiences From the NCCAM/NCCIH Orbit (Real-World Lessons, About )

Let’s talk about the lived experience around NCCAM/NCCIHbecause the story isn’t only a timeline of directors and renames. It’s also a long-running collision between what people want to work and what the evidence can actually support.

1) Researchers: “Designing trials for real life is harder than it looks.”
Scientists who work in this area often describe a very specific challenge: many complementary approaches aren’t a single pill with a single dose. They’re programs, behaviors, or hands-on therapies delivered by humans, to humans, in all their beautifully inconsistent glory. A mindfulness course isn’t identical across instructors. Yoga isn’t one thing. Acupuncture includes technique variation, dosing (number of sessions), and patient expectations. NCCIH-funded researchers frequently end up spending as much effort on measurement as on the interventionhow to measure adherence, fidelity, meaningful outcomes, and long-term impact without turning the study into something no real person would ever do.

2) Clinicians: “Patients are already doing thisplease help us counsel them.”
In primary care, pain clinics, oncology, cardiologypretty much everywherepatients try supplements, movement-based programs, mind-body practices, and other approaches whether clinicians bring them up or not. Many clinicians describe integrative health conversations as a mix of opportunity and risk. Opportunity, because some low-risk approaches (like certain forms of movement, stress reduction, or sleep support) may help symptom management and quality of life. Risk, because supplements can interact with medications and because some patients may delay effective treatment. Clinicians often want a simple thing that’s surprisingly hard to get: credible guidance that’s not dismissive, not gullible, and specific enough to use in a 15-minute visit.

3) Patients: “I’m not trying to be alternativeI’m trying to function.”
People living with chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety, fatigue, or side effects from complex illnesses often describe integrative approaches as less about ideology and more about survival logistics. When standard treatment helps but doesn’t fully solve symptoms, people look for add-ons that might move the needle. The strongest patient experiences tend to involve approaches used as part of a plan: realistic expectations, attention to safety, and coordination with medical care. The worst experiences often cluster around big promises, vague claims, expensive programs, and the subtle guilt-trip of “If you’re still sick, you must not be doing it right.” (A special shout-out to anyone who has been told their disease is basically a mindset issue. No, thanks.)

4) Everyone: “Science literacy is a health skill now.”
One of the most consistent experiences across this space is that people are drowning in health information. Studies get oversimplified. Headlines promise miracles. Social media confidently explains physiology in 12 seconds. NCCIH’s modern push for science literacy reflects a shared reality: learning how to evaluate evidenceat least at a basic levelhas become part of protecting your health and your wallet. In that sense, the NCCAM-to-NCCIH story isn’t only about which therapies work; it’s also about helping people navigate uncertainty without falling for certainty cosplay.

Conclusion: The Briggs Legacy, and the NCCIH Road Ahead

Josephine Briggs’ era at NCCAM/NCCIH is best understood as a long push toward scientific adulthood: study what people use, but insist on rigorous methods, meaningful outcomes, and clear public communication. That approach helped define the center’s modern identityespecially as it shifted from “alternative” language toward “integrative” reality.

Today, NCCIH is operating in a world where chronic pain, multimorbidity, and health-system complexity make whole-person frameworks more relevantwhile misinformation and marketplace hype make scientific rigor more necessary than ever. With leadership transition underway and a director recruitment process recently posted, NCCIH’s next chapter will likely be shaped by the same central question Briggs elevated years ago:

Can we turn high-demand, high-noise health practices into high-quality evidence people can actually use?