A review of the WHO strategy on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine from the perspective of academic consortia for integrative medicine and health

Rogier Hoenders; Ricardo Ghelman; Caio Portella; Samantha Simmons; Amy Locke; Holger Cramer; Daniel Gallego-Perez; Miek Jong

doi:10.3389/fmed.2024.1395698

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A review of the WHO strategy on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine from the perspective of academic consortia for integrative medicine and health

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A review of the WHO strategy on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine from the perspective of academic consortia for integrative medicine and health

Rogier Hoenders, Ricardo Ghelman, Caio Portella, Samantha Simmons, Amy Locke, Holger Cramer, Daniel Gallego-Perez and Miek Jong

Frontiers in medicine, Vol.11, 1395698

11/06/2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2024.1395698

Appears in Recent National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine Publications

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Abstract

integrative medicine

biomedicine

TCIM

T&CM

World Health Organization

policy

academic consortia for integrative medicine and health

Despite important progress in modern medicine, widely regarded as an indispensable foundation of healthcare in all highly advanced nations and regions, not all patients respond well to available treatments in biomedicine alone. Additionally, there are concerns about side effects of many medications and interventions, the unsustainable cost of healthcare and the low resolution of chronic non-communicable diseases and mental disorders whose incidence has risen in the last decades. Besides, the chronic stress and burnout of many healthcare professionals impairs the therapeutic relationship. These circumstances call for a change in the current paradigm and practices of biomedicine healthcare. Most of the world population (80%) uses some form of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (T&CM), usually alongside biomedicine. Patients seem equally satisfied with biomedicine and T&CM, but in the field of T&CM there are also many challenges, such as unsupported claims for safety and/or efficacy, contamination of herbal medicines and problems with regulation and quality standards. As biomedicine and T&CM seem to have different strengths and weaknesses, integration of both approaches may be beneficial. Indeed, WHO has repeatedly called upon member states to work on the integration of T&CM into healthcare systems. Integrative medicine (IM) is an approach that offers a paradigm for doing so. It combines the best of both worlds (biomedicine and T&CM), based on evidence for efficacy and safety, adopting a holistic personalized approach, focused on health. In the last decades academic health centers are increasingly supportive of IM, as evidenced by the foundation of national academic consortia for integrative medicine in Brazil (2017), the Netherlands (2018), and Germany (2024) besides the pioneering American consortium (1998). However, the integration process is slow and sometimes met with criticism and even hostility. The WHO T&CM strategies (2002–2005 and 2014–2023) have provided incipient guidance on the integration process, but several challenges are yet to be addressed. This policy review proposes several possible solutions, including the establishment of a global matrix of academic consortia for IM, to update and extend the WHO T&CM strategy, that is currently under review.

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Title: A review of the WHO strategy on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine from the perspective of academic consortia for integrative medicine and health
Creators: Rogier Hoenders - University of Groningen
Ricardo Ghelman - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Caio Portella - Universidade de São Paulo
Samantha Simmons - Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health (Lake Oswego, United States)
Amy Locke - University of Utah
Holger Cramer - University Hospital Tübingen (Tübingen, Germany)
Daniel Gallego-Perez - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Miek Jong - UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Publication Details: Frontiers in medicine, Vol.11, 1395698
Publisher: Frontiers Media S.A
Identifiers: 991013204712602368
Copyright: © 2024 Hoenders, Ghelman, Portella, Simmons, Locke, Cramer, Gallego-Perez and Jong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).
Academic Unit: National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine
Language: English
Resource Type: Journal article

A review of the WHO strategy on traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine from the perspective of academic consortia for integrative medicine and health

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