Massage therapy and canadians' health care needs 2020: proceedings of a national research priority setting summit.

Background: The health care landscape in Canada is changing rapidly as forces, such as an aging population, increasingly complex health issues and treatments, and economic pressure to reduce health care costs, bear down on the system. A cohesive national research agenda for massage therapy (MT) is needed in order to ensure maximum benefit is derived from research on treatment, health care policy, and cost effectiveness.

Setting: A one-day invitational summit was held in Toronto, Ontario to build strategic alliances among Canadian and international researchers, policy makers, and other stakeholders to help shape a national research agenda for MT.

Identifying the barriers to conducting outcomes research in integrative health care clinic settings--a qualitative study.

Background: Integrative health care (IHC) is an interdisciplinary blending of conventional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) with the purpose of enhancing patients' health. In 2006, we designed a study to assess outcomes that are relevant to people using such care. However, we faced major challenges in conducting this study and hypothesized that this might be due to the lack of a research climate in these clinics.