Selected Topics - Traditional and Complementary Medicine

Events

• School of Public Health and Community Medicine, UNSW - Upcoming Events

Global policies and related documents

• Australian Medical Association, Position Statement
  Australian Medical Association's position statement on complementary medicines and therapies. Includes a policy discussion paper from the 2001 National Conference.
• Australian TGA - Complementary Medicines
  The Australian Government Therapeutic Goods Administration's Complementary Medicines page provides information about legislation, guidelines, international agreements and consultation documents relevant to the practice of complementary and alternative medicine in Australia.
• White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy
  The White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy (WHCCAMP) was established in March, 2000 to address issues related to access and delivery of CAM priorities for research, and the need for better education of consumers and health care professionals about CAM. This site provides access to the commission's final report released in 2002.
• WHO's Policy and Strategy on Traditional Medicine
  This page, provided by the World Health Organisation includes information on medicinal plants, guidelines and standards, information on assessment, safety and efficacy of medicinal plants and WHO's Traditional Medicine Strategy 2002-2005 in 6 languages.

Reports, guidelines and projects

• Best Practices in Intercultural Health
  The practice of integrating western and traditional medicines is fast becoming an accepted and ever more widely used approach in health care systems throughout the world. However, recent debates about the development of intercultural health approaches have raised significant concerns regarding regulation, efficacy, intellectual property rights, lack of cross-cultural research, access and affordability, and protection of sacred Indigenous plants and knowledge. Recognizing the global importance of this issue and the paucity of collaborative research on intercultural health, the Inter American Development Bank developed an international initiative on Best Practices in Intercultural Health. This report describes that initiative.
• The Visible Human Project
  The United State's National Library of Medicine's Visible Human Project involves the creation of complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of the normal male and female human bodies. The long-term goal of the Visible Human Project is to produce a system of knowledge structures that will transparently link visual knowledge forms to symbolic knowledge formats such as the names of body parts.

Educational resources

• Alternative Medicine Homepage
  Created and maintained by Charles B Wessel, a Medical Librarian at the Health Library System, University of Pittsburgh, this site serves as a jumpstart to sources of information on unconventional, unorthodox, unproven, or alternative complementary, innovative, integrative therapies.
• BBC Health Complementary Medicine
  The BBC's guide to Complementary Medicine is aimed at a general audience. It provides information about ailments, complementary therapies and remedies as well as links to useful web sites.
• Folk Medicine : A UCLA Folklore Resource
  UCLA's Folk Medicine archive contains data from scientific journals, popular magazines, newspapers, and historical sources (diaries, travel accounts, treatises on plants and animals) over the past 200 years. More than 3,200 published works served as sources for archive holdings. Other materials derive from field collections in archives at UCLA, Detroit University, Pan American University, Berkeley, Sacramento State, and the University of Oregon.
• HerbMed
  HerbMed is an interactive, electronic herbal database. It provides hyperlinked access to the scientific data underlying the use of herbs for health. It is an impartial, evidence-based information resource provided by the nonprofit Alternative Medicine Foundation Inc.
• About Herbs, Botanicals and Other Products
  This site, which is presented by the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York provides information for oncologists and healthcare professionals about herbs and botanicals. It includes a clinical summary for each agent and details about constituents, adverse effects, interactions, and potential benefits or problems as well as evaluations of alternative or unproved cancer therapies and products for sexual dysfunction.

Organisations and Networks

UN and multinational

Government

• National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (USA)
  The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is 1 of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA. NCCAM is dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science, training complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) researchers, and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals

Non Government

• Alternative Medicine Foundation
  The Alternative Medicine Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded to provide responsible and reliable information about alternative medicine to the public and health professionals. Its principle aim is to respond to the public and professional need for responsible and reliable education, information, and dialogue about the integration of alternative and conventional medicine.
• American Academy of Medical Acupuncture
  The purpose of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture is to promote the integration of concepts from traditional and modern forms of acupuncture with Western medical training and thereby synthesize a more comprehensive approach to health care.
• American Holistic Medical Association
  The AHMA was founded to unite licensed physicians who practice holistic medicine. AHMA membership is open to licensed medical doctors (MDs) and doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs) from every specialty, and the medical students studying for those degrees. The mission of the AHMA is to support practitioners in their evolving personal and professional development as healers and to educate physicians about holistic medicine.
• British Complementary Medical Association
  The BCMA is an umbrella organisation representing 60 organisations, associations, schools and colleges in the field of complementary medicine. Its primary aim is to promote ethical, responsible, professional complementary medicine to the public and the medical profession.
• British Medical Acupuncture Society
  The British Medical Acupuncture Society was formed in 1980 as an association of medical practitioners interested in acupuncture.The BMAS promotes the use of acupuncture as a therapy following orthodox medical diagnosis by suitably trained practitioners. It seeks to enhance the education and training of suitably qualified practitioners, and to promote high standards of working practices in acupuncture among such practitioners, by means of tests, examinations, and accreditation procedures.
• Feldenkrais Educational Foundation of North America
  The purpose of the Feldenkrais Educational Foundation of North America (FEFNA) is to advance awareness and quality of life through research, education, and use of the Feldenkrais Method of learning through movement.
• Institute for Traditional Medicine (Portland, Oregon)
  ITM is a non-profit organization established by Subhuti Dharmanandain. It operates clinical facilities, provides educational materials, conducts background research in traditional medicine and supports traditional environments where traditional medicine can be performed.
• Research Council for Complementary Medicine
  The aim of the UK Research Council for Complementary Medicine is to develop and extend the evidence base for complementary medicine in order to provide practitioners and their patients with information about the effectiveness of individual therapies and the treatment of specific conditions.

Academic Institutions with particular focus in this area

• Duke Center for Integrative Medicine
  The Duke Center for Integrative Medicine (DCIM) offers individual patient consultation services, both public and professional education and dedicated research in the field of Integrative Medicine. Integrative Medicine is based on a partnership between patient and practitioner, within which the best of conventional, complementary and alternative medicine practices can be explored in a whole person approach to health care and healing.
• HealthEmotions Research Institute
  Based at the University of Wisconsin, the Institute "seeks to use state-of-the-art scientific methods developed for the study of illness to study the relationship between positive emotions and health. "
• University of Westminster, School of Integrated Health
  The School of Integrated Health's work emphasises collaboration and partnership between different professions such as community workers, complementary therapists, doctors, health visitors, midwives, nurses and social workers in order to foster a whole-person, reflective and integrated approach to health and social care.

Key Conferences, conference and workshop reports

Coming conferences

Conference reports

Journals, Newsletters, Forums

• BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
  Biomed Central's Complementary and Alternative Medicine publishes original research articles in complementary and alternative healthcare interventions, with a specific emphasis on those that elucidate biological mechanisms of action. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine (ISSN 1472-6882) is indexed/tracked/covered by PubMed, MEDLINE, CAS, Scopus and Google Scholar.
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the NIH
  This site provides access to information about the US National Institutes' of Health programs and research in complementary and alternative medicine as well as links to facts sheets, information products and a Calendar of Events.
• Chiropractic & Osteopathy
  Chiropractic & Osteopathy is the official journal of the Chiropractic & Osteopathic College of Australasia (COCA). It publishes articles on all aspects of evidence-based information that is clinically relevant to chiropractors, osteopaths and related health care professionals
• Internet Journal of Alternative Medicine
  The Internet Journal of Alternative Medicine is an on-line peer reviewed publication addressing the medical implications and practice of alternative medicine.

Bibliographies, Libraries

Public health bookshops

• Public Health bookshop