Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Cancer Care: An international analysis of grassroots integrationPhilip Tovey, John Chatwin and Alex Broom Over the last decade, traditional, complementary and alternative medicine has achieved an ever-higher profile amongst academics, healthcare professionals, policy makers and service users, particularly in cancer care.  Despite anecdotal evidence of the importance of patient groups and grassroots networks to the way people access therapies, research has tended to focus on the individual. Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Cancer Care  provides the first in depth exploration of the role patient support groups play in the provision of CAM in the UK and Australia. It also looks at the utilisation of non biomedical treatments in Pakistan focusing on the role of informal social networks.     Drawing on fieldwork in each country, the book explores: the empirical, theoretical, and policy context for the study of CAM/TM and cancer the nature, structure and evolution of patient support groups how groups function on a day-to-day basis the extent to which what is being offered in these CAM-oriented groups is in any way innovative and challenging to the therapeutic and organisational mainstream   the ways in which processes of negotiating therapeutic options play out in Pakistan Traditional, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Cancer Care will be of wide interest to those studying complementary and alternative medicine sociologically, to those involved in the provision of cancer care on a day-to-day basis, and to those looking to establish a more informed, evidence based policy. Philip Tovey is a Reader in Health Sociology at the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds, UK. John Chatwin is a Research Fellow at the School of Healthcare, University of Leeds, UK. Alex Broom is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, Australia.

Complementary and alternative medicine / cancer care.