Luminary: Mary Jo Kreitzer

Luminary: Mary Jo Kreitzer

As founder and director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing, Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer brings more than 15 years of leadership and expertise to the field of integrative medicine. She was the principal investigator of a $1.6 million National Institutes of Health (NCCAM) education grant and a Fetzer Institute funded evaluation of the Inner Life of Healers Program. She is currently the co-PI of a five year $2.1 million NIH (NINR) clinical trial of mindfulness meditation with solid organ transplant patients, the co-PI of a clinical trial funded by BlueCross/Blue Shield Minnesota on the impact of an integrated residential treatment program on women with eating disorders, the co-PI of an NIH NCCAM R21 grant on mind/body interventions for caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients and is the co-investigator of a clinical trial comparing mindfulness meditation with pharmacotherapy for people with chronic insomnia. She is also the co-PI of a newly funded NCCAM R25 grant focused on integrating research in a CAM educational institution.

Dr. Kreitzer is also the co-program director of an NIH funded clinical research fellowship program. In addition to her administrative responsibilities in the Center for Spirituality and Healing, Mary Jo teaches in the graduate minor in complementary therapies and healing practices and is a tenured professor in the School of Nursing. From 2004-2007, she served as the vice-chair of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine. Dr. Kreitzer earned her doctoral degree in health services research and her masters and bachelor’s degrees in nursing.