Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research and Innovation in Colombia, State of the Art

The project aimed at reviewing the indexed, non-indexed academic and grey literature on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Research and Innovation in Colombia. The review covered a 35-year period, identifying documents through indexed databases, direct searches in university libraries, direct contact with CAM practitioners and investigators using snow-ball sampling technique.  This was a qualitative, descriptive and analytic study.  The project provides an overview of the trends in CAM research and innovation in Colombia, portraying the types of documents found, analyzing their characteristics and publication patterns. The project reviews historical aspects of CAM modalities in Colombia, the legal context, as well as conceptual and methodological implications of CAM research in the local context. Additionally, 22 semi-structured interviews with key informants, recognized CAM practitioners and researchers in Colombia, were performed.  Interviewees were pioneer practitioners and researchers in several CAM modalities. The CAM research database built through this project is expected to become a national reference on the field and to facilitate identification of researchers across the country to foster research collaboration.