Integration of Complementary and Alternative Medicine into the Healthcare System in the United States

Chronic diseases are a prevalent issue around the world and chronic diseases are hard to prevent due to various systemic factors in the healthcare system. This paper mainly focused on socioeconomic issues and highlighted a few systemic factors in the US healthcare system. These factors have created various health disparities, inequities among socially constructed groups, and financial expenditures in the US healthcare system. Socioeconomic factors significantly impact the health and healthcare among socially constructed groups. Additionally, in this paper there are current approaches in addressing these healthcare factors such as social determinants of health and precision medicine as well as my alternate proposed solution to the current issues in the healthcare system such as Complementary and Alternative Medicine. A couple examples of Complementary and Alternative Medicine that were chosen are Food as Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine. These two alternative medicines give people a different perspective on how to prevent chronic diseases. To determine the feasibility of my alternate proposed solution, which is the integration of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in conjunction with the US healthcare system, a case study was done on Chang Bing Show Chwan Memorial Hospital in Taiwan. Taiwan’s healthcare system allows the current medical practice in conjunction with Traditional Chinese Medicine and other alternative medicines. This study concluded that complex systemic factors are connected and contributes to the prevalence of chronic diseases. Furthermore, chronic diseases can be prevented and reversed by changing lifestyle factors or using alternative therapies