Moving Beyond Anecdotal information
Identifying Treatments Likely to be Effective
New York City is home for people from many different cultural backgrounds. In every community, health-related behaviors and accepted treatments are anchored in collective experience, belief systems, and healing philosophies. Beliefs about the etiology, susceptibility and controllability of disease and about the risks and benefits of preventative and therapeutic approaches are deeply rooted at the cultural level.
Little is known about the effectiveness of specific practices across – or even within – diverse communities. Do responses to therapies differ between populations that have used "alternative" approaches for many years as a part of their healing traditions from those that have only recently begun to incorporate them? The Weill Cornell Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine has designed qualitative and quantitative studies that build on the acquired insight of these experiences and therapies from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. We have shown how social networks in many communities help to determine many of the individuals' beliefs and expectations with regard to health and the use of different treatment modalities. These community studies have led clinical research that tests the efficacy and effectiveness of approaches to health and healing that have long been used in different cultures and communities.
