Our Approach/Philosophy
A spirit of inquiry and critical thinking on the part of the practitioner is essential. While Integrative Medicine incorporates the best of conventional medicine, it also respects the body’s inherent ability to heal. As such, it also makes use of modalities which encourage the body’s healing response. The integrative physician works in partnership with you, the patient, looking at your whole person and your health quest in the context of the whole.
Sometimes the best in life comes through fusion. Integrative Medicine brings together traditional and alternative, ancient and modern, body and mind.
Our Story
A graduate of Tulane University Medical School, Dr. Claudia Cooke has been certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, and is currently certified by the Board of Physicians and Surgeons. She also has Physician Certification in Acupuncture in New York State. Dr. Cooke was previously honored with election to Fellowship in the American College of Physicians and is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture.
Dr. Cooke honed her clinical skills for over twelve years in emergency medicine and is deeply versed in emergency care and its varying perspectives. Five years were spent in one of New York City’s busiest ERs where she cared for over 20,000 patients in the acute care setting.
She held an appointment as an Affiliate Physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s Columbia division for 24 years where she served as Clinical Preceptor both in Physical Diagnosis at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for 22 years and in the past in Acupuncture to the previously existing UCLA School of Medicine’s Medical Acupuncture for Physicians course. In 2022, she retired her Columbia appointment to dedicate herself fully to her medical practice and to writing.
Dr. Cooke’s lineage extends back through five generations of physicians in her family. Her great grandfather Henry was a physician in two of the biggest battles of the Civil War. Her grandfather Robert Anderson Cooke pioneered the field of allergy, opening the first allergy clinic in the US, and publishing the first textbook of allergy. Her personal addition to the family’s medical pedigree is that of the combined approach, one founded upon traditional medical theory and training, and which draws upon alternative medicine, acupuncture and Chinese medicine, nutrition, hypnosis, and other individualized techniques and modalities.
Dr. Cooke welcomes those who want to be proactive in their health journey.
Dr. Cooke speaks French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.