Richard Hammerschlag, Ph.D.

Richard Hammerschlag, Ph.D., received his doctorate in biochemistry from Brandeis University. He was a biomedical researcher in neurobiology for 25 years, mainly at the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope in Duarte, California, where he served as Associate Chair of the Division of Neurosciences from 1986 – 1995. A long term interest in acupuncture and the unique challenges it poses for research led to a career change in 1995 when he became Academic Dean and Research Director at Yo San University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Santa Monica, CA. He moved to Portland in the fall of 1999 to create a research department at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. During the past 5 years he has been coordinating collaborative acupuncture research projects with Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research and Oregon Health & Science University, funded by the NIH National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). He was an invited speaker at the 1997 NIH Consensus Conference on Acupuncture, and co-edited Clinical Acupuncture: Scientific Basis (Springer-Verlag, 2001). He also served, from 1997-2003, as co-president of the Society for Acupuncture Research.

Dr. Hammerschlag has a strong preference for research studies that compare acupuncture and Oriental medicine treatment to biomedical care (“Western medicine”) so that patients, physicians, insurance companies and health policy decision makers can use the results to help them make informed choices among health care options. He is also greatly interested in what acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine can tell us about how the body functions in ways that Western medicine does not presently understand. He believes that this millennia-old medicine, as well as his grandchildren, has much to teach him.

Richard Hammerschlag, Ph.D.
Research Director
Oregon College of Oriental Medicine
10525 SE Cherry Blossom Drive
Portland, OR 97216
503 253-3443 x156
rhammerschlag@ocom.edu