CAM should partner with Western
medicine, research finds

A number of federally recognized complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) schools and conventional academic health centers have launched inter-institutional partnerships in recent years, and now investigators have revealed the extent and nature of their relationships.

The main finding of recent research is that for CAM to play an important and beneficial role in today's health care, it must establish a relationship with conventional medicine. The research was presented at The North American Research Conference on Complementary and Integrative Medicine by John Weeks, a spokesperson for the National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Health Care. The conference was held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in late May.

The study included 130 CAM schools accredited by a federally recognized accrediting agency in one or more of five disciplines: chiropractic, acupuncture and Oriental medicine, massage therapy, naturopathic medicine and direct-entry midwifery. Also included were 28 conventional academic medical schools that are part of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine.

Survey responses were received from 93 percent of conventional medical school programs and 61 percent of CAM programs. Overall, 34 percent of CAM schools noted formal relationships with conventional medical programs.

The results indicated that more than 50 percent of the relationships between the two disciplines were based on informal contacts, while 15 percent to 30 percent were formal relationships. Specifically, conventional programs were more likely to have formal relationships with schools of acupuncture (32 percent) and massage (20 percent) and less likely with chiropractic (12 percent) and naturopathic medicine (8 percent).

Approximately 85 percent of respondents from both medical and complementary/alternative medicine schools agreed that "creating a fully integrated healthcare system will require that institutions/programs like ours develop stronger, multi-dimensional, inter-institutional relationships" with programs of the other disciplines.

The respondents noted that strengthening and deepening these relationships may be achieved by strategies that incorporate materials on best practices, including the sharing of sample agreements created by other institutions, and focused meetings on the topic. These were viewed as top strategies for enhancing inter-institutional relationships.

"Conventional and complementary/alternative educational programs presently have a significant web of relationships that is yet marked by an informality which does not reflect the importance such relationships are viewed as having in fostering fully-integrated healthcare," the authors concluded.