Indigenous traditional medicine and intercultural healthcare in Bolivia: a case study from the Potosi region.

Indigenous peoples have the worst socio-demographic indicators and the largest inequalities in terms of access to social services and health in the Latin American region, Bolivia included. In the last few years, attempts to implement policies that support indigenous people's health rights led to the development of intercultural health approaches. Yet, acceptance and integration of indigenous medicine into the biomedical health system presents a major challenge to intercultural health in Latin America.

Changing the global health care landscape-proceedings of a "glocal" symposium.

Background: This glocal (global knowledge with local action) symposium was convened by a professional therapeutic massage bodywork professional organization to bring together the fields of economics, politics, and traditional and complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) to begin development of effective TCAM advocacy worldwide. The symposium addressed the core question, "What information will be needed to address issues that will arise as TCAM practitioners advocate for a respectful and equalfooting access to health care provision, public and private, worldwide?"

Participants And Setting: The 35 international participants convened in a Victoria, Canada hotel. They were selectively invited to provide expertise in: advocacy, politics, public policy, economics, TCAM practice, integrative practice, sociology and TCAM research, education, media and language framing, psychology, and mediation.

Linking integrative medicine with interprofessional education and care initiatives: challenges and opportunities for interprofessional collaboration.

Although the fields of interprofessional education and collaboration (IPE/IPC) and integrative medicine (IM) are both recognised and clearly advancing as of late, a curious paradox exists: IPE/IPC and IM are both concerned with communicating about and attempting to resolve differences between healthcare professions with the fundamental goal of improving patient outcomes, yet they have remained quite distinct fields of research. This disconnect could be due to the fact that one field deals with integration within the general paradigm of biomedicine (IPE/IPC), while the other addresses integration across paradigms (IM). It is an opportune time for a critical comparison between the two.

CAM in Canadian hospitals: the new frontier?

The provision in hospitals of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM), as recognized by the World Health Organization, is now widespread in many of the world's healthcare systems. As a significant part of integrative medicine (IM) or healthcare (IHC), research has now begun to focus on the varied parameters of hospital-based TCAM, however, little research has been conducted on the topic in the Canadian context. Drawing on a multi-site case study of four Canadian hospitals, qualitative observation was conducted at hospital sites, and interviews were conducted with senior hospital leaders and biomedical and TCAM hospital practitioners.

Contextualizing integration: a critical social science approach to integrative health care.

This article argues for the importance of examining the phenomenon of integrative health care in broader social and historical contexts. The authors examine mainstream approaches to identify patterns of integrative medicine and criticize them for their neglect of clashes among different philosophical paradigms and the wider social contexts that govern health care in practice. The authors outline a framework and highlight the values of a critical social science perspective in deepening our understanding of recent transformations in health care practice and issues surrounding biomedicine and complementary/alternative medicine (including chiropractic, naturopathy, massage, acupuncture/oriental medicine, etc) and traditional medicine.

Re-positioning the role of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine as essential health knowledge in global health: do they still have a role to play?

Traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM), drawn from indigenous medical and/or healing knowledge systems from around the world, has for the last 30 years been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as providing culturally acceptable, affordable and sustainable primary healthcare. TCAM knowledge has been known for some time to assist with birthing practices, acute injuries, infectious diseases and parasites. Although the focus on TCAM began in earnest by the WHO in 1978, and was re-emphasized between 2002 and 2008, TCAM has for the most part been overlooked in large-scale international health programs.

Uncharted ground: patterns of professional interaction among complementary/alternative and biomedical practitioners in integrative health care settings.

The development of "integrative health care" (IHC) settings combining various aspects of Western biomedicine and complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) is a relatively recent phenomenon among biomedical and CAM professions. While IHC is recognised internationally and occurs in many different contexts (e.g.

Priority setting in a hospital drug formulary: a qualitative case study and evaluation.

Dramatically rising costs for new drugs are posing major challenges for hospital budgets. In response to these pressures, hospitals must set priorities for which drugs they will list on their formularies. While there have been studies relevant to decision making in hospitals regarding drugs, none have described how priority setting for drugs in hospitals is done and evaluated it against a framework of how it should be done.