NIH-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine- Comprehensive Strategic Plan and Budget to Reduce and Eliminate Health Disparities

CAM practices can be described as those not presently considered an integral part of conventional medicine. Recent national surveys document substantial and growing use of CAM in the United States, with most people using CAM in addition to, rather than instead of, conventional care. However, little is known about CAM use in racial and ethnic minority populations. To the degree that minority populations are using CAM as an alternative to, rather than complementing conventional care, increased integration of CAM modalities and systems with the conventional health care system may help overcome some of the barriers to use of conventional medical services for minority populations, potentially enhancing access for minority populations to proven therapies. NCCAM’s research additionally has the potential for contributing to the elimination of health disparities by supporting research into the health behaviors of racial and ethic minority populations, thereby supporting culturally competent health care. To this end, NCCAM’s activities and research initiatives will focus on identifying and understanding the gaps in knowledge regarding CAM use in minority populations. This plan is organized in priority order by area of emphasis, and within areas of emphasis by objective and by initiative. The areas of emphasis have been chosen to coincide with those in the NCCAM Five-Year Strategic Plan. Investing in Research is the primary area of emphasis, with initiatives addressing population based research on CAM use as well as research on disease-specific CAM approaches. The second area of emphasis, Training CAM Researchers, will target initiatives to diversify the CAM research community. Expanding Outreach is the third area of emphasis, highlighting the importance of developing effective communication with professional and lay communities in order to make the research findings relevant to minority populations.http://www.ncmhd.nih.gov/strategicmock/our_programs/strategic/pubs/NCCAM.pd