TEST ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES – La Trobe University’s decision to accept funding from Switzerland for a new alternative medicine research center has sparked controversy. This series examines how the evidence behind alternative medicine can be evaluated, as well as the ethics of these links between industry and research institutions.
Acupuncture, chiropractic, herbal medicines, massage and other therapies known collectively as complementary and alternative medicine are big business in Australia, as elsewhere.
About two thirds of Australians use such products and practices over the course of a year. However, the debate around these therapies remains dominated by emotional and political commentary – from both sides.
Doing the Right Kind of Research
Like all other areas of healthcare practice and consumption, complementary therapies must be supported by rigorous scientific research. The gold standard is the randomized controlled trial, which aims to determine whether a treatment or medication is clinically effective.
This type of research should be applauded and encouraged. But the current popularity of alternative therapies highlights the immediate need for parallel public health and health services research.
What we need is a broad range of methods and approaches essential to understanding the place and use of complementary therapies in contemporary health care.
Such an approach provides results that directly benefit practice and policy. It would be in the interest of patients, practitioners and those who manage and direct health policies to address critical questions such as why, when and how alternative therapies are currently consumed and practiced.
Studies along these lines help provide an evidence-based platform to ensure safe and effective healthcare. And it is important to note that such investigations are neither for nor against complementary medicine.
The work is rather undertaken in the spirit of a critical and rigorous empirical study which traces a path free of the emotion to which we are accustomed on this subject.
A work in full swing
A number of recent Australian projects have begun to conduct precisely this type of research, to explore the use and practice of alternative therapies from a critical public health and health services research perspective.
Research drawing on a large, nationally representative sample of 1,835 pregnant women, for example, has shown that complementary therapies are popular for pregnancy-related conditions. THE researchers found almost half (49.4%) of the women studied had consulted an alternative therapy practitioner at the same time as a maternity care provider for a pregnancy-related condition.
In the same way, another study found 40% of Australian women with back pain surveyed had seen a complementary therapy practitioner, as well as a healthcare provider for back pain.
Other Australian research found that women in rural areas are statistically more likely to use alternative medicine than their counterparts in urban Australia.
And the use was identified as high among older Australian men and women as well as in people suffering from depression, cancer and various chronic illnesses.
In these and other areas of health behavior and utilization, fundamental questions requiring further examination include how people make decisions to use complementary therapies, and how they seek information and engage in it.
Discover the use
The use of alternative therapies is often a hidden activity within the community and, in many cases, distant from formal care and health care providers (and, in some cases, separate from complementary therapists as well). This raises a number of potential risks to safety, effectiveness, and coordination of care.
Although many people condemn complementary and alternative therapies due to the lack of clinical evidence, this does not constitute a scientific basis for ignoring or denying research on the subject.
In fact, it is the opposite case. If we accept that most complementary therapies have, at best, little or no emerging clinical evidence, then it surely becomes necessary to try to better understand what drives people to use them, how and in what ways. context they use them, and what information they can obtain. rely on them to decide whether they will use them.
At a time when health care funding is under strain due to an aging population and increases in chronic disease, it is imperative that research-based assessments of future practices, policies and Financial planning includes consideration of all health treatments.
Such research will not only help produce a critical, non-partisan platform for a better understanding of complementary and alternative therapies, but it will also provide a rigorous and broad evidence base with which to assist people, practitioners and policy makers on this important component of Australian politics. health care.
This is the first article in our series on complementary and alternative therapies. Click the links below to read the others:
Can we scientifically test medicinal plants?
