NCCIH’s Langevin Retires
Dr. Helene M. Langevin, director of NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), retired from federal service on November 30.
Since taking the role in 2018, she spearheaded the concept of whole person health at NCCIH, focusing on integration across physiological systems and positive health processes, such as resilience and health restoration.
As NCCIH director, Langevin led several NIH-wide initiatives that placed whole person health at the forefront of NIH’s emerging unified strategy to address the burden of chronic disease in the United States. This includes the recent funding of the Whole Person Reference Physiome and Coordination Center, led by NCCIH and co-funded by 20 NIH institutes, centers and offices to create a cross-system network map of healthy physiological function. In collaboration with the CDC National Center for Health Statistics, Langevin steered the development of the Whole Person Health Index, which is currently being deployed in the National Health Interview Survey and the NIH All of Us Research Program’s longitudinal cohort.
During her tenure, Langevin co-led the CARE for Health™ initiative and the NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory to create a learning health system, embedding pragmatic research into health care settings to accelerate the implementation of research findings into clinical practice. Together with leadership from NIH’s Office of Nutrition Research, Office of Dietary Supplements and National Institute of Nursing Research, she defined the Nutrition Continuum, spanning across biological, behavioral, social and environmental domains and linking nutrition research across NIH.
In addition, Langevin served as chair of the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee, co-chair of the Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative (NIH HEAL Initiative®), co-chair of the Bridge to Artificial Intelligence (Bridge2AI) program, and chair of the Research Services Working Group. She also served as an adjunct investigator at NIH’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research connective tissue section, where her research interests have focused on the role of connective tissue and mechano-biology in inflammation and cancer.
Prior to coming to NIH, Langevin was director of the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and professor-in-residence of medicine at Harvard Medical School from 2012 to 2018. She was also a professor of neurological sciences at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine.
She received an M.D. from McGill University and trained in internal medicine, endocrinology, and metabolism at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is a fellow of the American College of Physicians.
Upon leaving NIH, Langevin will rejoin the University of Vermont to help build a research program at the UVM Osher Center for Integrative Health. She will also serve in an advisory role at the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health.
“It was the honor of a lifetime for me to lead NCCIH for the past seven years,” she reflected. “I am especially proud of the many NIH-wide initiatives led by NCCIH on positive health processes, multisystem integration and whole person health. I look forward to continuing to promote research excellence in these transformational areas in my new roles at the University of Vermont and the Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health.”
NCCIH Deputy Director Dr. David Shurtleff will serve as acting director while a search is conducted for the position.