Two medical organizations recognized the School of Medicine and Health Sciences and announced partnerships with one of the school’s master’s programs, according to a release Monday.

The American Board of Lifestyle Medicine and the American College of Lifestyle Medicine acknowledged SMHS’s master’s program in integrative medicine – which teaches students how to care for patients through nutrition, metabolism and evidence-based practices – by allowing students to prepare for certification through ABLM and ACLM during their time at GW. The integrative medicine program is the first degree-granting program to be recommended for physicians by the ABLM, according to the release.

“It feels triumphant,” Leigh A. Frame, the executive director of the Office of Integrative Medicine and Health, said in the release. “The ABLM and ACLM could see our Master of Science in Health Sciences in integrative medicine is very much on the leading edge of what’s being done in medicine and yet is firmly evidence-based.”

Students in the master’s and fellowship programs in integrative medicine will be able to receive their certification in lifestyle medicine through their master’s program. The certification, provided by the ABLM for physicians and the ACLM for other health professionals, certifies individuals in preventing and treating chronic disease through research-based practices.

Students can take the lifestyle medicine certification exam, administered by the ABLM, through SMHS’s Foundation of Integrative Medicine class. Students who aim to take the exam will need to complete 30 additional hours of training on the basics of lifestyle medicine through the ACLM, but they will have an additional 20-hour training session waived, according to the release.

Physicians who want to obtain certification normally need to complete 100 hours of education and 30 hours of training, but under the partnership between GW and the ABLM, the 100 hours of education will be completed through the student’s coursework.

“I’m hoping this will be the added motivation that physicians and health professionals need to really carve out the time to complete our integrative medicine program,” Frame said in the release. “For physicians, when you’re thinking about getting a master’s and you already have a doctorate, it’s not really going to add that much in terms of the credentials, but adding two additional board certifications is another story.”