The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 270 No 7246 p564
26 April 2003

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Department of Health sponsors complementary medicine research

Over £1.3m is to be spent by the Department of Health this year on research into complementary treatments and alternative medicine.

The new National Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) Award Scheme will pay for research in such areas as acupuncture and homoeopathy. Five researchers have been given awards in the first round of the new scheme.

Announcing the awards, Public Health Minister Hazel Blears said that the development of a solid evidence base for complementary and alternative medicine is important. "Increasingly, the population is turning to complementary and alternative medicines sources as well as using mainstream medicine," she said.

Dr Alison Shaw, a social scientist at the University of Bristol, is to investigate male cancer patients' views on and use of CAM and the use of CAM for asthma. Dr Christine Barry, a Brunel University research fellow, will undertake an ethnographic study of medical and lay homoeopathy training and an examination of homoeopathic doctors' clinical decision making processes. Dr Elaine Weatherley-Jones, a senior research fellow at Sheffield University, is to look at homoeopathic treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome. Dr Peter White, research physiotherapist at the University of Southampton, and Dr Hugh MacPherson, research director at the University of York, are to study acupuncture independently.