The University of Massachusetts Medical School announced last week that the department is now home to “what is believed to be the first-of-its-kind academic division focused on the study of mindfulness.”

Dr. Judson Brewer, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry and director of research at U Mass’s Center of Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, has been named as chief of the Division of Mindfulness.

“The creation of a stand-alone Division of Mindfulness embedded within a Department of Medicine highlights how far the field has progressed and matured, and will create the infrastructure and support for researchers dedicated to furthering our neuroscientific knowledge of how the mind works, and for what medical conditions mindfulness is efficacious,” Brewer told Tricycle in an email.

The move comes more than 30 years after the center’s Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) clinic was established at the university. Since then, more than 24,000 people have been trained in Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at the clinic.

The center was previously housed in the Division of Preventive and Behavioral Medicine at the University of Massachusetts.