PURPOSE: The paper aims to take a reflective stance on the relationship between policy/evidence and practice, which, the authors argue, is conceptually under-developed. The paper aims to show that current research perspectives fail to frame evidence and policy in relation to practice. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A qualitative study was conducted in the English NHS in four Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). Seventy-five observations of meetings and 52 semi-structured interviews were completed.
Eighteen Norwegian dairy farmers were interviewed to examine their reasons for using homoeopathic treatments in managing their herds' health. Overall, they chose the treatments on the basis of factors related to their personal experience, considerations of individual animals and the framework for dairy production. For individual animals homoeopathy was used as an alternative to conventional veterinary treatment, but at the herd level it was used to complement it.
Acupuncture and other types of 'complementary and alternative medicine' (CAM) are proving increasingly popular in the UK. As attempts to incorporate acupuncture into allopathic medicine have grown in number, the issue of assessing its effectiveness in ways consistent with the concept of evidence-based medicine has become more urgent. The nature, relevance and applicability of such assessments remain controversial however.
Nearly four in ten American use complementary or alternative medicine (CAM) each year. Even with a large number of patients, CAM practitioners face scrutiny from physicians and biomedical researchers who, in an era of evidence-based medicine, argue there is little evidence to support CAM treatments. Examining how CAM has or has not been integrated into American health care is crucial in understanding the contemporary boundaries of healthcare systems.
AIM OF THE STUDY: The role of ethnobotany in drug discovery is huge but there are criticisms over such studies due to their qualitative nature. The present study is aimed at quantitatively abstracting the medicinal plant knowledge of the healers trained in traditional ways, in Mayiladumparai block of Theni District, Tamil Nadu, India. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The interviews and field observations were carried out in all the 18 village panchayaths from January to June 2010, consisting of 148 field days.
Some researchers in the field of ageing claim that significant extension of the human lifespan will be possible in the near future. While many of these researchers have assumed that the community will welcome this technology, there has been very little research on community attitudes to life extension. This paper presents the results of an in-depth qualitative study of community attitudes to life extension across age groups and religious boundaries.
There are a number of ethical, social, and personal implications generated by the potential development and use of technologies that may extend human longevity by intervening in aging. Despite speculations about likely public attitudes toward life extension, to date there have been few attempts to empirically examine the public's perspective of these issues. Using open-ended survey questions via telephone interviews, this study explored the attitudes of 605 members of the Australian public toward the implications of life extension.
The present study aims at describing the health status of a sample of relatively functional and healthy Greek centenarians and at exploring the potential gender differences in health in this sample. Its objectives are to add to the accumulation of knowledge about the health status of centenarians and therefore to contribute to the exploration of the mechanisms of healthy longevity. The study employs a non-representative community sample of Greek centenarians of both sexes (N=47).
BACKGROUND: Adherence to a Mediterranean diet has been reported to increase longevity, but concerns have been expressed that such a diet may promote overweight and obesity. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to investigate whether adherence to the traditional Mediterranean diet, as operationalized in a Mediterranean diet score, is associated with body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR).
Health Psychology: Official Journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether positive affect predicts mortality among people with diabetes and among a comparison group of people with no chronic health conditions. DESIGN: Longitudinal cohort study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Mortality. RESULTS: Positive affect was significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality in people with diabetes (N = 715). Enjoyed life was associated with lower risk of mortality over and above the effects of negative affect or other significant predictors of mortality.
