On Witnessing the Precipice between Life and Death.

In the context of hospital intensive care units, lives often hang in tenuous balance among potential healing, continuing survival, and death. Caretakers and loved ones, both family and friends, who are present to accompany and lend support to the stricken individuals are witnesses to suffering that embodies pain, discomfort, and prolonged uncertainty. My experiences throughout a concentrated period of being present in three, overlapping situations of people in the liminal space of the ICU are described.

Challenging integration: clinicians' perspectives of communicating collaboration in a center for integrative medicine.

A shift has occurred in the provision of health care to include a focus not just on biology and disease but also on the whole person, preventative care, and an array of healing modalities based on systems of beliefs and values not typically included within biomedical practice. This approach to health care, termed integrative medicine (IM), blends biomedicine with a broader understanding of patients and their illnesses, including elements of mind, body, and spirit that may be contributing to an ailment. While the use of integrative medicine has increased and centers for integrative medicine have proliferated within conventional health care organizations, distinct tensions arise from this amalgamation.

Roads Less Traveled: Finding a Path to Using Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

An increasing number of health seekers in the United States are looking outside conventional medicine to address their health needs. It is estimated that in the United States, 38% of adults use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Extant research characterizes CAM users as a unified homogeneous group, with little understanding of the differences among them in terms of attitudes toward body, wellness, disease, and pivotal aspects of their personal histories.

Trailblazing healthcare: institutionalizing and integrating complementary medicine.

Objectives: This study examines three integrative health centers to understand their (1) historical development, organizational goals, and modalities, (2) the processes and challenges of integrating complementary and allopathic medicine, while encouraging staff collaboration, and (3) how each center becomes institutionalized within their community.

Methods: We focus on three organizational case studies that reflect varying forms of integrative health care practices in three U.S.

Rural food insecurity in the United States as an overlooked site of struggle in health communication.

This article indicates the need for health communication scholars to attend to the growing national problem of rural food insecurity. A review of the health communication literature reveals that food insecurity and rural health overall are research issues that have been overlooked. Using the Culture-Centered Approach ( Dutta, 2008 ), while simultaneously searching for community assets as well as problems, we explore aspects of rural residents' food environments, culture, and institutional structures that empower and constrain their communities.