Mary L. Hardy, MD Medical Director, Simms/Mann UCLA Integrative Oncology Program; Member, UCLA Collaborative Centers for Integrative Medicine; Co-director, Integrative Medicine Health and Wellness Program, Venice Family Clinic; Member, Consortium for Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine

Dr. Mary Hardy, board certified in internal medicine and a specialist in botanical and integrative medicine, has actively combined complementary and alternative therapies with traditional Western medicine for many years.

A graduate of Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Dr. Hardy completed her internal medicine residency at the Tufts New England Medical Center before studying medical ethics at Harvard Divinity School and Loma Linda University. She completed advanced training in botanical medicine at the Institute for Medical Herbalism and has studied with practitioners in Peru, Kenya, South Africa and China. She was the complementary and alternative medicine expert for a number of research projects conducted by the Southern California Evidence Based Practice Center at the RAND Corporation.  In addition, she expanded her interest in botanical research by serving for two and half years as the Associate Director of the UCLA Botanical Research Center, funded by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Hardy recently completed a book for Reader’s Digest, Best Remedies that focuses on Integrative Medicine. She also conducted a review of the quality of research trials in herbal medicine and finished a systematic review on the effects of dietary supplements on coagulation for the Office of Dietary Supplements.

Dr. Hardy also serves on the scientific advisory board of the American Botanical Council and the editorial boards of Alternative Medicine Altert, Alternative Therapies in Women’s Health, Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, FACT as well as Phytomedicine. Dr. Hardy is recognized as an authority on integrative medicine and natural products by organizations such as the Office of Dietary Supplements, the California Medical Board, the American Medical Association, the American Pharmaceutical Association, CBS, NBC, Discovery Channel and the Los Angeles Times. She is a founding member of the Advisory Council for the Naturopathic Medicine Board of California and was recently appointed to the External Advisory Council for the Natural Product Directorate for the Canadian government.

The multi-disciplinary clinic she founded at Cedars-Sinai in the department of Medicine in 1998 allowed her to explore the practical and philosophical issues that both facilitate and impede the development of Integrative Medicine as a discipline.  Contributing to the national development of integrative medicine, she serves as the Co-chairperson of the Clinical Practice Committee of the Academic Consortium of Integrative Medicine (an organization of the leading medical schools practicing and teaching in this area). Her current research interests include reviewing the evidence for the safety and efficacy of natural therapies, especially botanicals.

Dr. Hardy is the Medical Director of the Simms/Mann Integrative Oncology Program at UCLA, which involves educating cancer patients in integrative therapies. She is also currently the co-director of the Integrative Medicine Health and Wellness Program at the Venice Family Clinic, the largest free clinic in the United States.

Contact Information

200 UCLA Medical Plaza, Suite 502
Los Angeles, CA 90095-6934
Tel: (310) 794-6644
Fax: (310) 794-9615
mhardy@mednet.ucla.edu
www.cancerresources.mednet.ucla.edu
cancerresources@mednet.ucla.edu