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Hi Virginia, Your questions are wonderful and complex. Change will come on many levels as you have alluded to. Patients/consumers/voters are already accessing complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) products and services in significant amounts. A 2006 survey of Canadians found that 74% used CAM at some point in there lifetime and 50% in the previous year. AS consumers of health care we need to demand safe and equitable access to these services. That's how policies change. Many of my colleagues are attempting to make changes in medical education. At McMaster University I have created an Introduction to CAM course which is in its fourth year and required curriculum for all of the students. McMaster is a member of the Consortium for Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, which is 45 member schools strong, including Yale, Harvard and the Mayo Clinic. So things are changing albeit slowly. One of the biggest barriers as I see it is the reimbursement structures for physicians which creates volume driven practices over prevention driven health care. This must change.
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