Complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) has become big business. Alongside the increased consumption of complementary medicine and the swelling numbers of complementary health practitioners has emerged a growing interest in these medicines and therapies from within the ranks of conventional primary health care. At the level of practice and beyond, a culture of confrontation and antagonism has begun to be replaced by a focus upon potential integration, collaboration and common ground.

With these significant developments in mind, this ground-breaking book is a valuable and timely addition to the CIM and primary health care research literature. The collection outlines the core issues, challenges and opportunities facing the CIM–primary health care interface and its study and will provide insight and inspiration for those practising, studying and researching the contemporary relations between CIM and primary health care.

The book is the first to be authored by leading international CIM–primary health care researchers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, including health social science, statistics, qualitative methodology, general practice, clinical trials design, clinical pharmacology, health services research and public health. All contributors are active CIM–primary health care researchers and their extensive research and practice experience helps lend a unique immediacy and richness to the contributions and collection.

Contents:Patients, Illness and Disease: CIM Use and Its Context in Primary Health Care:Primary Health Care, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Women's Health: A Focus upon Menopause (Amie Steel, Jane Frawley, Jon Adams, David Sibbritt, and Alex Broom)Complementary and Integrative Medicine, Aging and Chronic Illness: Towards an Interprofessional Approach in Primary Health Care (Kevin D Willison, Sally Lindsay, Marissa Taylor, Harold Schroeder, and Gavin J Andrews)Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Skin Disease in General Practice (Parker Magin and Jon Adams)Practitioners and the Professional CIM Interface:Naturopaths: Their Role in Primary Health Care Delivery (Jon Wardle and Jon Adams)Linking Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Traditional Medicine and Primary Health Care: The Role of Local Health Traditions in Promoting Health Security (Daniel Hollenberg and Maria Costanza Torri)Examining the Relationship between Complementary and Integrative Medicine and Rural General Practice: A Focus upon Health Services Research (Jon Wardle, Jon Adams, Alex Broom, and David Sibbritt)(Just) Who is the Expert? The Ambiguity of Expertise in Over-the-Counter CAM Purchasing: An Ethnographic Study of UK Community Pharmacies and Health Shops (Helen Cramer, Lesley Wye, Marjorie Weiss, and Ali Shaw)Conceptualising Integrative Medicine in Primary Health Care: Experience and Challenges:Integrating Complementary Medicine in Primary Health Care as a Response to Contemporary Challenges: A Focus upon Effectiveness Gaps and Self-Care (David Peters)Exploring a Model of Integrative Medicine: A Case Study in Swedish Primary Health Care (Tobias Sundberg)Integration in Primary Health Care: A Focus upon Practice and Education and the Importance of a Critical Social Science Perspective (Jon Adams, Daniel Hollenberg, Alex Broom, Amie Steel, David Sibbritt, and Chi-Wai Lui)Readership: Practitioners, pharmacists, nurses, health care managers, governments, policy makers and regulators, researchers, academia, and advanced students of conventional as well as alternative healthcare, and the general audience who are interested in evidence-based holistic self-care.