[Which complementary and alternative medicine modalities are integrated within Israeli healthcare organizations and do they match the public's preferences?].

Introduction: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a broad term that encompasses diverse healthcare modalities that emanate from a variety of healing cultures. One of the basic principles of CAM is the promotion of cultural pluralism and openness to diverse cultural aspects of health and illness. Some CAM modalities have been integrated into Israeli healthcare organizations over the past two decades.

[Complementary and alternative medical information on Israeli medical institutions' web sites in 2009: the desirable vs. the available].

Background: Although complementary and alternative medicine [CAM] is a term commonly used to denote practices that lie beyond the dominant medical orthodoxy, these practices are penetrating Israeli medical institutions. The purpose of the study was to evaluate CAM information on medical institutions' web sites in relation to the type of information considered to be significant by integrative physicians. The methods employed included evaluating CAM information on the websites of: all four health insurance agencies, the eleven largest hospitals in Israel, the Ministry of Health, and the Israeli Medical Association.

Network gatekeeping: complementary medicine information on the websites of medical institutions.

Integrative medicine - complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practised in mainstream healthcare organizations - combines medical treatments based on incommensurable paradigms. As the Internet has been portrayed as a crucial pathway to CAM and sites administered by reputable organizations are considered to be relatively reliable sources of medical information, the research sought to explore and compare the ways in which CAM is presented on the Internet websites of diverse medical institutions. The contents of the websites of the Ministry of Health, the Israeli Medical Association and Israeli healthcare organizations were analysed, using an interdisciplinary theory of network gatekeeping.

The untenable boundaries of biomedical knowledge: epistemologies and rhetoric strategies in the debate over evaluating complementary and alternative medicine.

The article addresses contemporary epistemologies in examining struggles between the proponents of diverse medical approaches - some accepted as scientific and others that have not gained this status. It is based on research that investigated one of the central questions raised as a result of the growing popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in western countries during the past three decades, namely: How can we know if CAM treatments are effective and beneficial? Discourse analysis was conducted on publications written by medical knowledge producers - experts participating in different professional groups addressing controversies over questions such as the desirability of researching CAM treatment effects, the appropriate methodology to be employed and the appropriate criteria for evaluating these effects. Some central debates are presented in the article.

Mental disorders stigma in the media: review of studies on production, content, and influences.

This article analyzes two decades of research regarding the mass media's role in shaping, perpetuating, and reducing the stigma of mental illness. It concentrates on three broad areas common in media inquiry: production, representation, and audiences. The analysis reveals that descriptions of mental illness and the mentally ill are distorted due to inaccuracies, exaggerations, or misinformation.