The Increasing Relevance of Traditional Medicine Systems for the Primary Health Care Sector and General Practice: Global Research Perspectives

About this Research Topic

Background

Traditional medical (TM) systems continue to have relevance in healthcare worldwide, particularly in family medicine and primary care. The WHO explicitly promotes traditional medicine by issuing recommendations in this field and establishing corresponding centers, including the Global Center for TM in India. The increasing importance of Asia, Africa, and South America in the global political and economic arena has made this topic even more relevant. The first WHO Traditional Medicine Global Summit, which took place as recently as August 2023, again impressively points out the increasing importance of traditional systems of medicine.

Against the background of the escalating costs in the primary health care sector, traditional medicine systems may make important contributions to individual and planetary health through cost-effective, relatively easy-to-implement, and resource-saving approaches. The broader integration of evidence-informed and scalable traditional medicine systems could improve long-term treatment outcomes in managing widespread non-communicable diseases on a global scale.

This Research Topic aims to highlight the potential of traditional medicine to address treatment gaps and unmet needs in global health care by presenting innovative research results from traditional medicine with a specific focus on family medicine and primary care. Submissions should be of interest and relevance to as wide an international readership as possible. Alongside Original Research articles, Clinical Trials, Brief Research Reports, and Systematic Reviews, selected Community Case Studies, and other Reviews will be considered. Transdisciplinary research and mixed-methods approaches, including qualitative research, are also welcome. Areas such as health prevention and promotion, general medicine, nutritional medicine, rheumatology/orthopedics, and pain medicine using TM are a special focus of this collection.

NOTE: Please note that the second volume of this collection can now be found here:
The Increasing Relevance of Traditional Medicine Systems for the Primary Health Care Sector and General Practice: Global Research Perspectives – Volume II

Keywords: traditional medicine, family medicine, primary health care, integrative medicine, complementary medicine, whole medical systems, planetary health

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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