The Program in Placebo Studies and the Therapeutic Encounter enables researchers, clinicians, scholars, and students to examine the placebo response and the implications of medical ritual, the patient-provider relationship, cultural context, and the power of imagination, trust and hope in the healing process. Through interdisciplinary endeavors to elucidate, quantify and optimize the humanistic dimensions of health care, PiPS seeks to transform the “non-specific” aspects of medicine into targeted opportunities to improve clinical care and pharmaceutical development.