Dr David Peters
David Peters leads the CoM Faculty of Practitioner Wellbeing and Editor Journal of Holistic Healthcare and Integrative Medicine published three times a year by The British Association for Holistic Medicine and Healthcare. https://bhma.org/resources/journal-of-holistic-healthcare-integrative-medicine/
Prof Peters trained as a family doctor, and later in osteopathic medicine and as a musculoskeletal physician. From 1990 until 2005 he directed the ground-breaking complementary therapies development programme at Marylebone Health Centre (MHC), an innovative Central London NHS GP unit set up in 1986 to explore new approaches to inner city primary healthcare.
He was in the founding faculty of the University of Westminster's School of Integrated Health which merged with the Department of Bioscience in 2009 to form the School of Life Sciences where he is now Emeritus Professor of Integrated Healthcare and was formerly its Clinical Director.
He has co-authored or edited five books about complementary therapies, and has led on a series of research projects implementing or evaluating complementary medicine in mainstream settings. One recent NHS study provided community access to acupuncture and stress reduction for people with long-term low back pain; another evaluated the use of osteopathy and acupuncture for musculoskeletal pain in a general practice setting. A current project is evaluating the use of acupuncture alongside counselling for men in distress.
He was until 2010 Chair of the British Holistic Medical Association - an open association of practitioners working to develop holistic healthcare (bhma.org) . He founded the Journal of Holistic Healthcare in 2003 and is now Editor in Chief. He was a founding director and is a current Council member of the College of Medicine whose aim is to encourage more patient-centred and values-based approaches in healthcare.
Prof Peters’ clinical work as a musculoskeletal physician has been greatly enriched by osteopathy and acupuncture, by the somatically-oriented psychotherapeutic methods devised by Peter Levine, and by his own forty year long exploration of yoga and meditation. A particular clinical interest is in dysregulatory syndromes where pain and/or fatigue often overlap, and in the associated autonomic imbalance and breathing pattern disorders.
He co-founded in 2014 a cross-university initiative - the Westminster Centre for Resilience - to develop and deliver training and research into the resilience and recovery of staff in the public sector and industry. His particular focus, having left full time academic work is on doctor resilience, the causes and mitigation of burnout, the healing power of nature immersion, and the significance of ecopsychology at a time of planetary emergency.