Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Utilization of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies are receiving increasing and widespread appeal in the United States. Patterns of seeking treatment vary across clients, level of experience with CAM use, and type of health issues. Recent statistics suggest that in 1997, Americans made an estimated 629 million visits to CAM practitioners; at the same time expenditures for these services increased of 47.3% from 1990.

Research objective: This study explores patterns of racial and ethnic differences in CAM use. Specifically we address the following questions: Is CAM a complement or substitute of traditional medicine? Are the racial and ethnic differences in CAM use, a result of CAM utilization being a complement or substitute? Do attitudes toward healthcare influence the use of CAM as a complement or substitute? How do concerns of racial bias in healthcare influence traditional medicine and CAM?

Data: We analyzed data from the Commonwealth Fund 2001 Health Care Quality Survey. This is a nationally administered telephone survey of adults. The sample size was 6,722. African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans were over-sampled. The survey covered several domains including health care utilization, satisfaction, health status, socioeconomic status and demographic information, attitudes about value of medical care and perceptions about the presence of racial/ethnic bias in medical treatment.

Methodology: We used multinomial logistic regression models to explored the association between race and whether individuals used CAM only, traditional medicine only, CAM and traditional medicine, or neither CAM nor traditional medicine. Also, we were interested in the effects of attitudes about racial/ethnic bias in healthcare and attitudes about the value of medical care. Our analysis controlled for several factors including age, gender, health status, insurance status, income, education and geographic location.

Findings: CAM appeared to be a complement and not a substitute for traditional medicine. We found that all minorities were less likely to use traditional medicine and CAM compared to whites. However, the disparity differed across minority groups. We also found that individuals experiencing racial bias in healthcare were more likely to use both while individuals who believed their health was dependent on luck were less likely to use both.