This interview is with Integrative Medicine Insights editorial board member Dr Merrijoy Kelner. Integrative Medicine Insights is an open access journal published by Libertas Academica.

Editor in Chief Dr Steven Gurgevich has recently issued a call for papers.

What is the primary focus of your research?

Since my mandatory retirement in 1963, I have focused my research on Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). This work evolved from my earlier research on chiropractors in the 1970's. Since retirement I have worked closely with Bev Wellman. We first looked at the patients who use a variety of CAM therapies and then turned our attention to the ways in which the CAM occupations are striving to become legitimate health care professionals in the Canadian system. Most recently we are examining the issues related to the integration of conventional medical care with CAM and I am now spearheading an international study of integrative care with scholars from Italy, Israel, the UK and the USA.

What are the most exciting developments arising from current research in your area?

In 1997 we published one of the first systematic profiles of patients who use CAM therapies. In the same year we also published an article that demonstrated that users of CAM do not give up their allopathic doctors incorporate CAM therapies into their overall health care.
In 1998 I organized the first international social science conference on CAM. One outcome of this was an edited book: "Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Challenge and Change" (Kelner Wellman Pescosoldo and Saks,2000), which featured the work of the scholars attending the conference. Recently, 2007, we held a planning workshop on integrative health care attended by scholars from four different countries.

Who are your main collaborators? Please describe your work with them.

Professor Heather Boon from the School of Pharmacy and Professor Sandy Welsh from the Department of Sociology, both from the University of Toronto joined our team in 2001 and have been working with us ever since on planning, conducting, analyzing and writing up our research on CAM.

How did you come to be working in your research area?

I first became interested in this area of research when I was teaching social science perspectives to medical students at the U of T medical school. I recognized that their view of health care was limited only to medical care and decided to arrange a couple of lectures from leading chiropractors. We continued this arrangement for a few years and this led to an invitation from the president of the national chiropractic organization to me and my colleague Peter New to conduct a Canada wide study of the chiropractors and their patients. This was published as "Chiropractors: Do they Help? (Kelner, Hall and Coulter, 1980.

As a consequence of this earlier interest and the stimulus of similar work done by some of my graduate students, Wellman and I decided to concentrate on this field of research after my retirement. At the time it was not a popular area of study for social scientists but has since developed into a much more solid research field.


What do you think about the development of open access publishing? Have you published in an open access journal? What motivated you to do so?

It is an interesting and timely development but I have not personally availed myself of the opportunity to use it.

What articles and/or books have you published recently?

Soklaridis, S., Kelner, M.J., Love, R., and D. Cassidy. Forthcoming 2009. “Integrative Health Care in a Hospital Setting: Communication Patterns Between Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Biomedical Practitioners.” Journal of Inter-professional Care.

Soklaridis, S., Kelner, M.J., Love, R., and D. Cassidy. 2009. “The Organizational Support Necessary for Integrative Health Care (IHC): A Clinic for Artists in a Hospital Setting.” Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine 6(1):Article 3. DOI:10.2202/1553-3840.1139 http://www.bepress.com/jcim/vo16/iss1/3.

Kelner, M.J., Wellman, B., Welsh, S. and H. Boon. 2006. “How Far Can Complementary and Alternative Medicine Go? The Cases of Chiropractic and Homeopathy.” Social Science and Medicine 63:2617-2627.

Kelly, M., Hardwick, K., Motitz, S., Kelner, M.J., Rickhi, B. and H. Quan. 2005. “Towards Integration: The Opinions of Health Policy Makers on Complementary and Alternative Medicine.” Evidence Based Integrative Medicine 2(2):79-86.

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