One of the challenges facing primary care clinicians who recognize the important role that complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has in their patients' lives is to understand how to effectively serve their patients' interests through integrating the CAM and allopathic care. Primary care clinicians need to better understand the patterns of CAM use by their patients in order to integrate that care into their services. This is especially important in communities where traditional medicine concepts continue to have an important role. RIOS Net is a primary care practice-based research network, whose 170 members are primary care clinicians serving New Mexico's Hispanic and American Indian communities. Through their practice experience, these clinicians have set a priority on research to identify effective ways to integrate their patients' allopathic and CAM care. ? ? This project will provide key building blocks toward a clinical trial assessing the outcomes of a model of integration of allopathic primary care with CAM in the Southwest's Hispanic and American Indian communities.
The specific aims for this pilot project are to: 1) document the decision-making process behind the use of CAM modalities, allopathic care, and their integration by Hispanic and American Indian patients of primary care providers in the Southwest; 2) to identify barriers to integration and to communication about CAM between primary care providers, patients, and CAM providers; and 3) to develop a model of integrative care for Hispanic and American Indian primary care patients in the Southwestern US. A two phase study is planned, using qualitative interviews with Hispanic and American Indian primary care patients of members of RIOS Net, and using interviews and focus groups with primary care clinicians serving these patients. The results will be used to design subsequent studies assessing frequency of use of CAM in primary care patients and exploring CAM providers perspectives on the process of integration of care, and to construct the clinical trial of integration of allopathic and primary care. ? ?
| Sussman, Andrew L; Williams, Robert L; Shelley, Brian M (2010) Can we rapidly identify traditional, complementary and alternative medicine users in the primary care encounter? A RIOS Net study. Ethn Dis 20:64-70 |
| Shelley, Brian M; Sussman, Andrew L; Williams, Robert L et al. (2009) 'They don't ask me so I don't tell them': patient-clinician communication about traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine. Ann Fam Med 7:139-47 |
| Williams, Robert L; Shelley, Brian M; Sussman, Andrew L et al. (2009) The marriage of community-based participatory research and practice-based research networks: can it work? -A Research Involving Outpatient Settings Network (RIOS Net) study. J Am Board Fam Med 22:428-35 |
| Sussman, Andrew L; Rivera, Marino (2008) 'Be gentle and be sincere about it': a story about community-based primary care research. Ann Fam Med 6:463-5 |
