Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine in the Community

This breakthrough guide offers social workers and community practitioners a bold new approach to complementary medicine―working with resources in the community instead of relying solely on integrating with traditional healthcare systems. Its framework is organized to expand community health services, with emphasis on locally-based social workers, nurses, and other trained community practitioners providing mind/body therapies, self-care coaching, and general wellness programs, as well as modality-based approaches. A wide array of healing modalities is featured, including yoga, meditation/mindfulness, hypnosis, biofeedback, qi gong, acupuncture, ayurveda and curanderismo with robust data and evidence for the merits of each. This model carries abundant opportunities for meshing complementary approaches with mainstream healthcare and extending continuity of care into the community for local clinicians to engage with individual clients, groups, and community resources. Included in the coverage:         Social, cultural and economic factors, folk medicines, and home remedies.         Scientific foundations of community consciousness.         Agriculture, food, diet, nutrition, and hydration.         Mindfulness interventions as community and in community.         Consciousness-based community health and education         Challenges for integration of CAM in the community. The innovative strategy set out in Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine in the Community gives social workers, psychotherapists and counselors, complementary and alternative medicine professionals, public health professionals, and health psychologists a palette of innovative ideas and effective approaches as diverse and exciting as the communities they serve.