Reflections

Ka-Kit Hui ’71, M.D. ’75 (RES ’78, FEL ’79), professor, founder/director, UCLA Center for East-West Medicine and the Wallis Annenberg Chair in Integrative East-West Medicine, Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and chair, UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine, is an educator and researcher whose broad-based knowledge of comprehensive medical care stems from multiple areas of specialization—internal medicine, clinical pharmacology, geriatrics, traditional Chinese medicine and integrative medicine. His basic and clinical investigations, as well clinical practices as both generalist and consultant, have provided him with unique insights into the concepts of regulation, homeostasis and balance, as well as the complementarity of modern medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. Dr. Hui has served as a consultant to the FDA, National Institutes of Health, World Health Organization, health insurance companies, drug companies and the media and holds visiting and honorary professorships in various universities throughout the world.

My whole journey is a miracle. My birthplace is Hong Kong, but UCLA is where I have spent almost half a century. I arrived at UCLA in 1969 to study chemistry with the aspiration of introducing to the Western world a new drug from the Chinese herbal pharmacopoeia, like what the 2015 Nobel Prize winner Tu Youyou did in introducing the antimalarial drug, artemisinin.

Instead, my dream during medical school with a Regent Scholarship turned to creating a new medical model by blending the best of both modern Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine to make healthcare more effective, safer, affordable and accessible to all.

It is at UCLA, where my vision of establishing this integrative health model of comprehensive care with emphasis on health promotion, disease prevention, treatment and rehabilitation through an integrative practice of East-West medicine, has been realized. My form of integrative medicine is not like an international buffet, where a provider picks randomly from a disjointed assortment of therapies, such as adding acupuncture or massage to a drug therapy. What we practice at the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine (CEWM) is instead like a well thought-out dinner menu, with the best and most appropriate therapies from the West and the East selected and targeted to the specific needs of each patient. This model has been extremely successful during the last 22 years of the Center. We receive referrals from more than 500 UCLA physicians from different specialties, to whom we are immensely thankful, to help care for patients who have different refractory medical problems. At CEWM, we also teach hundreds of students annually through our many educational programs, including a summer course for trainees from around the world, medical student courses, resident rotation and two-year East-West primary care and specialty fellowships. On the basis of this incredible scientific and clinical success, we are now moving into primary and population care and expanding our collaboration and teaching into the larger local medical and patient communities.

I have achieved this goal over the span of my last 47 years of academic life at UCLA with much hardship, strategic thinking and contributions from so many people. I attribute this achievement to all those who have believed in my vision and my ability to realize this dream. Thank you to all former trainees who have taken a gamble in career development during the early stages of the CEWM and helped to build the field in their own brilliant ways, including three who are each building one of the CEWM’s three clinics and one who is building the in-patient program at UCLA. There is simply not enough space in this publication to list the numerous family, patients, colleagues, friends, donors and foundations that have come alongside me at different points on my life’s path to help achieve the goal of developing a better health model for patients and the public.

My beloved late wife, Shirley Hui, who married me when I was in medical school because of my aspirations to build this health model more than four decades ago, allowed me to devote my full energy to realizing this dream, including using part of our income to launch the Center before philanthropic support became available. Stress related to this early revolutionary work contributed to her developing metastatic breast carcinoma that took her away from me, but integrative medicine kept her going for 11-and-a-half years to enjoy our five beautiful grandchildren.

Out of sheer luck, I have had the great fortune to have Dr. Sherman Mellinkoff, dean emeritus, as my mentor for the last 40 years. Our relationship started when I was a fourth-year medical student during my externship. Fast forward 20 years, his letter of support provided guidance for me in developing the CEWM: “Your proposal for an expanded UCLA Center for East-West Medicine strikes me as an inspiring plan. Its implementation could be of great value in medical education, medical research, cost-effective and compassionate care of patients, prevention of illness and synergistic application of principles originating in Eastern and Western civilizations. The beacon you have already ignited at UCLA could, through this Center, grow in luster to the benefit of all mankind.”

While Dean Mellinkoff has inspired me over the years, Alan Fogelman, M.D.’66 (RES ’71, FEL ’73), chair of the Department of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, enabled me to launch the Center in 1993. He also continues to provide mentorship and support and I appreciate his more than 20 years of encouragement.

I am greatly indebted to many of my patients who have entrusted their life to me, helped teach not only me, but also our trainees, and some who even provided philanthropic support. Without the early support of Janet Stein of the Balm Foundation from New York, the endowed chair from Wallis Annenberg and Charlie Weingarten at the Annenberg Foundation, as well as the continuing support of Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer and Andrew and Peggy Cherng, and too many others to list, my vision would not be a reality. The Beatles were correct—we all need a little help from our friends.

Crisis creates opportunity. With the rise of the crisis in the healthcare system globally, we are provided with a golden opportunity to collectively transform the current system into one that is patient and public oriented and will provide us and future generations with healthcare that is safe, effective, accessible and affordable for all. It is my next dream to globalize this person- and healing-centered, self-empowering and prevention-focused model by disseminating it through innovative educational approaches to benefit people throughout the world.

To learn more about UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, visit cewm.med.ucla.edu.

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