Our Team

Laura Tavernier, MD is the founder of Tantien Integrative Medicine in Branford, Connecticut. She is a fellowship-trained integrative medicine specialist who completed the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona. She has 34 years of clinical experience and is a U.S. Army veteran who served as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division. Dr. Tavernier is Board Certified through ABOIM, which is widely recognized as the gold-standard credential in integrative medicine.

Dr. Tavernier’s earliest exposure to healing began in childhood, inspired by the teachings of her curandera grandmother. After serving six years in the United States Army as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, she returned home deeply influenced by her primary care physician—an integrative practitioner who blended conventional and alternative medicine.

Dr. Tavernier went on to complete her medical degree and residency at the University of California, where her mentors and attending physicians strongly supported the incorporation of evidence-based alternative therapies within traditional medical practice. Over the following decades, she witnessed a changing medical landscape that increasingly constrained her ability to provide the kind of care she believed in—whole-person, patient-centered medicine that considers all appropriate, evidence-based approaches to healing.

This belief was profoundly reaffirmed when her spouse endured a life-threatening illness stemming from a misdiagnosis, followed by a remarkable recovery supported through lifestyle changes and alternative therapies. This experience strengthened Dr. Tavernier’s conviction that medicine must treat the person, not just the disease.

Driven by this commitment, Dr. Tavernier pursued formal training in Integrative Medicine through the Andrew Weil Fellowship at the University of Arizona. After completing her training, she founded Tantien Integrative Medicine to practice healthcare as she believes it was always meant to be: patient-centered, evidence-based, whole-person, and inclusive of all effective therapeutic modalities.

The Andrew Weil Fellowship

The Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine Fellowship at the University of Arizona is one of the most respected and academically rigorous programs of its kind in the world. It is not a certification course or weekend workshop. It is a structured, multi-year fellowship designed for licensed practitioners, grounded in evidence-based medicine, and covering the full spectrum of whole-person care: nutrition, mind-body medicine, botanical therapies, lifestyle medicine, and the integration of conventional and complementary approaches into a single, patient-centered practice.

It is worth noting that Connecticut’s current regulatory definition of integrative medicine does not yet reflect this level of formal academic training or the existence of ABOIM board certification. Dr. Tavernier’s credentials exceed what the state’s definition contemplates — she is not simply a physician who incorporates wellness practices, but a fellowship-trained integrative medicine specialist in the truest clinical sense of the term.