Heather Tick Bio

HEATHER TICK, M.D.

Associate Director, Osher Center Clinical Core

UW Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Family Medicine

UW Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine

Gunn-Loke Endowed Professor for Integrative Pain Medicine

As the first holder of the prestigious Gunn-Loke Endowed Professorship for Integrative Pain Medicine at UW Medicine, Dr. Heather Tick incorporates integrative medicine with a focus on healthful self-care practices and long-term results into her practice.

Dr. Tick has been an integrative pain practitioner for more than 25 years. Her academic work includes a May 2014 publication in Pain: Clinical Updates and publication of a set of proposed core competencies for integrative pain medicine for primary­care practitioners. She has also published many integrative medicine chapter texts for pain fellowship preparation, physical medicine and interventional pain medicine. Dr. Tick is working on chapters for an integrative medicine textbook, edited by Richard Carmona, M.D., MPH, FACS, former Surgeon General of the United States, and on a chapter on the therapeutic order for a new naturopathic textbook, edited by Pamela Snider, N.D.

Dr. Tick is also an adjunct professor at the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, and she has been involved with research at the University of Waterloo and the University of Arizona. Until2011, she directed the Integrative Pain Clinic at theUniversity of Arizona, part of the Department of Family and Community Medicine. The University of Arizona Health Plans then

recruited her to start an integrative medicine pain clinic for Medicaid patients. Dr. Tick is a consultant in chronic pain for the Samueli Institute Chronic Pain Breakthrough Collaborative, chaired by Eric Schoomaker, M.D., Ph.D., former Surgeon General of the U.S. Army.

The author of multiple books, including the acclaimed Holistic Pain Relief An In-depth Guide to Managing Chronic Pain, Dr. Tick empowers her patients to live free of pain and full of life. She is interested in expanding the reach of integrative medical practices to underserved populations through education and research. Because Dr. Tick's care approach focuses on creating health in her patients, her methods have application in other fields of medicine.