Alternative and Complementary Medicine (CAM) Use in the U.S.: New Data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) Available in the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS)

With funding from NIH, researchers at University of Minnesota created the Integrated Health Interview Series (IHIS), which provides consistently-coded and thoroughly-documented data from the U.S. National Health Interview Series (NHIS) for free to researchers over the Internet. In 2010, IHIS is making available 4000 variables on use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), based on NHIS supplements covering one sample adult (1999, 2002, 2007) and one sample child (2007) per household. This paper describes how to use the IHIS website, documentation, and data extract system to access these rich, nationally-representative data covering the use of vitamins and herbs and 16 CAM techniques. These NHIS/IHIS data address such questions as whether the respondent combined CAM with conventional medicine, what conditions were treated, how respondents learned about CAM and why they decided to use it, and how much money was spent on CAM. Using other variables included in IHIS (such as education, family income, health status, insurance coverage, and access to health care), researchers can evaluate the socioeconomic and health predictors of CAM use. The presentation will include illustrative examples analyzing CAM data in IHIS (e.g., changes in the use of CAM by adults, and the association between CAM use, socioeconomic status, health status, and access to conventional medicine).