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Dr. Woodson C. Merrell is an internationally recognized leader in the field of integrative health care. He believes, "Integrative medicine is the medicine of the future because it provides more options for everyone. It focuses on relationship-centered medical care, and patient empowerment." As executive director of the Continuum Center for Health & Healing in New York City, affiliated with Beth Israel Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Dr. Merrell heads an interdisciplinary team of medical doctors, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, psychotherapists and complementary care practitioners providing services in family medicine, pediatrics, gynecology, homeopathy, nutrition, physical therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, mind-body and massage therapy.

For the past 12 years, Dr. Merrell, a certified physician-acupuncturist, has been incorporating complementary modalities, including acupuncture, homeopathy, botanicals (one of his special interests), nutritional therapies, and mind/body techniques into his private practice in internal medicine, where he emphasizes prevention and early intervention. Dr. Merrell developed one of the nation's first medical school courses on complementary medicine at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he is assistant clinical professor of medicine, striving to make scientific research on integrative medicine standard knowledge for medical students. He has lectured widely to professional and consumer groups, including giving testimony for both Houses of Congress on alternative/complementary medicine's role in health care in the United States. He served as the scientific co-chairman for the First International Conference on Tibetan Medicine (1998), and on the steering committee for the first Indigenous Healing Traditions of the Americas conference (2002). He is currently a board member of New York State's Office of Professional Medical Conduct and a past chairman of New York State's Board of Acupuncture.

Dr. Merrell's mission to educate physicians and health care specialists on the best conventional and complementary healing tools for their patients includes teaching such continuing education courses as "Botanical Medicine in Clinical Practices" at Columbia University, and making such presentations as "Health Care Fraud and Alternative Medicine" (Federation of State Medical Boards) and "Alternative/ Complementary Medicine and Health" (Oncology Section of the New York State Medical Society).

Dr. Merrell is the founder of the Northeast Regional Consortium of Academic Complementary and Alternative Medicine Centers. He is also on the steering committee of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, a national organization of medical schools and integrative healthcare centers dedicated to bringing the principles of integrative medicine to medical school education and physician practice.

Born in San Francisco, Dr. Merrell attended Amherst College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he specialized in primary care medicine. His acquaintance with complementary medicine began at the age of one, when a neighborhood doctor cured his croup by placing three pellets of homeopathic aconite under his tongue. Dr. Merrell's clinical fellowships took him to Beijing, Shanghai, Tanzania and Trinidad, where he learned about traditional remedies, studied herbal and tropical medicine, and worked with tribal healers. His special interests include Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan, Chinese and Ayurvedic medical systems.