Social and Health Policy Research

Research in this strand is focused on social and public health and policy issues relating to complementary medicine in Australia, such as safety, usage, industry regulation and clinical practice standards.

The centre published Towards a Safer Choice, the widely acclaimed international report on the use of Chinese medicine that laid the foundation for regulating Chinese medicine practice in Victoria and paved the way for developing regulatory guidelines in other states.

CompleMED also collaborates with the World Health Organisation on the development of guidelines in the harmonisation of traditional and modern medicine, and provides advice to the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Complementary Medicines Evaluation Committee, state health departments and other government agencies nationally and internationally in research and education matters in complementary medicine. Areas of study include:

• health policy development through federal and state government agencies
• improving workforce regulation and standards in complementary medicine in Australia
• economic analyses of complementary medicine usage
• database development, including the Chinese Herbal Medicine Toxicology Database outlining the adverse effects of Chinese herbs, interactions with western medicines and evidence based toxicity grading of each herb.
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