Dr. George Lewith
The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation provided a grant of £106,045 to support George Lewith’s part-time research position leading the Complementary and Integrated Medicine Research Unit (CAM) in 2007/08.
The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation also supports statistical advice and appropriate academic travel for the group. CAM is a central theme within Primary Care’s research strategy. Over the last 18 months they have published almost 30 papers. They have developed new approaches to defining best practice and written a number of editorial pieces, but the majority of their publications have involved substantial amounts of new data analysis with papers encompassing systematic reviews, qualitative research, a variety of clinical trials and continuing brain imaging studies. The statistical support provided has been essential in sustaining the rigour and high quality of data analysis within their publications.
They have been particularly successful in enabling international research collaboration. This has involved visits to Tromso, Norway, the Society for Academic Research Conference in Baltimore and the Cochrane Centre for Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing. They have set up a data retrieval and translation facility in China with the Register for Chinese Herbal Medicine in the UK and colleagues in Beijing. Felicity Bishop was awarded a five-year post-doctoral research fellowship by the Arthritis Research Campaign and they have also had significant input into a substantial NIH acupuncture grant, as well as continuing their strategy of investigating and evaluating CAM use among cancer patients. They are actively involved in three cancer projects and the National Cancer Research Institute: they are evaluating healing and acupuncture among populations of cancer patients and completing a qualitative synthesis based on patient interviews with cancer patients. They have also been involved in a key EU initiative for developing a strategic approach to the evaluation of Chinese herbal medicines, this has involved many colleagues in Europe and China.
Their UK work has involved helping to establish CAMSTRAND, a group of UK universities actively involved in CAM research. ISCMR (www.iscmr.org) now runs international conferences on a 3 year cycle in Europe, North America and Asia a strategy was established during the Presidency of Dr. George Lewith.