For Dr. Mikhail Kogan, Medical Director of the GW Center for Integrative Medicine, the practice of medicine, much like the rest of his life, has been a journey of great distance across many cultures, with valuable new learning and different perspectives coming at every step along the way. All of those experiences – here or abroad, in the classroom or the clinic, on the road and at home, in his professional career and his personal life – have endowed Dr. Kogan with the skills, talents, openness, and inquisitiveness that set him apart as a committed and caring practitioner of integrative medicine.
Born in Moscow in what was then the Soviet Union, Dr. Kogan emigrated with his family while still in his teen years, first to Israel and then to the United States, where he obtained his medical degree from the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He followed a Primary Care and Social Medicine Track Residency in Internal Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, and a Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, D.C., which led to his joining the faculty there as an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Care. In addition to multiple research and teaching responsibilities at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dr. Kogan currently serves as Associate Director of the Geriatrics Fellowship Program and provides geriatric consultations at George Washington University Hospital.
In addition to his formal training in conventional Western medicine, Dr. Kogan has actively pursued a number of other healing arts and practices that have shaped his understanding of and approach to patient care. He is a graduate of a two-year training course in craniosacral therapy, a subtle osteopathic modality that has a wide range of effectiveness for different conditions such as headaches, back pains, and fatigue. He has also completed a four-year program at the Suluk Academy, a teaching center based on the principles and traditions of Sufism, where he learned how to incorporate meditation, mindfulness, and different spiritual practices into his daily life and his work with the patients. Among his many other areas of study are courses in nutrition, therapeutic use of vitamins, functional medicine, botanicals, and other alternative modalities.
Weaving those tools into the fabric of his medical practice has enabled Dr. Kogan to provide innovative and effective treatments to his patients with minimal use of invasive procedures or heavy reliance on medications, to understand the importance of self-exploration, awareness and beneficial lifestyle changes as essential stepping stones on his patients’ paths towards better health.
His commitment to the importance of integrating different healing modalities with modern-day Western medicine has led him to become a founding board member of the American Board of Integrative Medicine, the director of the George Washington University Integrative Geriatrics Fellowship and co-director of the Integrative Medicine Track program at the George Washington University School of Medicine, a part-time faculty member of the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health, and GW Center for Aging, Health and Humanities.
This commitment to an integrated approach to patient care is at the heart of Dr. Kogan’s vision of the GW Center for Integrative Medicine as a model for the Integrated Medical Home, a repository of resources, care, and healing for all patients, but especially those with complex medical problems and chronic conditions who so often need more than conventional Western medical treatments alone can provide
Outside of the clinic, Dr. Kogan, together with his wife Angela, stays busy raising young sons Peter and Sebastian. True to his calling as an integrative practitioner, his leisure time is replete with healthy lifestyle activities that nourish both body and spirit – vigorous exercise, frequent nature walks with his family and dog, beekeeping, and gardening.