Harriet Hansell, MD

I was born in Hong Kong and came to the United States when I was a little over one year old. I grew up with an immigrant mentality that hardworking, motivated people could attain any level of success in life. Even though I grew up very poor, my mother made all home cooked meals that were affordable and nutritious. The Chinese believe that food is medicine, therefore you tailor your food choices to treat and prevent conditions.

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Growing up, I did not realize that there was a difference between western (conventional) and eastern medicine. My mother would go to two different providers to keep her healthy. I didn’t understand why there wasn’t one person to provide that. That was when I realized that I wanted to be the provider that could bridge the gap between western and eastern medicine.

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In 1999, I started at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for medical school. I was able to create an elective in China, spending one month working at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in both the western medicine and eastern medicine departments, only reconfirming my desire to become certified in medical acupuncture. I chose Duke University Medical Center for my family medicine residency because of their focus on evidence-based medicine and because I was able to become certified for medical acupuncture by the UCLA Helms Institute for Physicians during my residency. I was then able to use my elective time during residency to increase my clinical practice further by working with local acupuncturists.

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After residency, I worked with a small, local Integrative practice in Durham until the birth of my first child. After my maternity leave, I went back to Duke Family Medicine clinic, practicing family medicine and helping start their medical acupuncture clinic. I also taught at Duke Medical School, for their Practice Course, teaching communication, physical exam, and clinical reasoning skills. I then left Duke in 2011 and joined a UNC clinic in Raleigh. Along with my philosophy of health promotion, I also developed their first acupuncture clinic that was integrated into the traditional primary care clinic. The majority of my patients there were looking for personalized medicine to optimize their health. They would bring in articles and always want to know what they could do other than pharmaceuticals to help improve their health. This spearheaded my desire to learn more at nutrition and integrative medicine conferences offered through Dr. Andrew Weil’s Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and the Institute for Functional Medicine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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