Veronica Gutierrez on
"CAM Information (Internet and Media)" on March 26-27, 2001

This section is compiled by Frank M. Painter, D.C.
Send all comments or additions to:    Frankp@chiro.org

Our workgroup's mandate was to address issues and recommendations relating to the Internet and the media on information dissemination.

What we recommend is the establishment of a web site, possibly a private and governmental agency partnership, the site to address both products and services, on the site list pros and cons in the voter's pamphlet model. Link to other reliable sites.

We would like the site to address safety issues, for example, links to state licensing and disciplinary information sites, and we would recommend that states that do not presently have licensing and disciplinary boards do that and that the information then be linked to the site.

We would like to them address under safety issues the drug, the herbal, over-the-counter interaction risks and side effects, the issue of contamination, and use as a resource consumers reports and all of their organizations that evaluate such things.

Under safety, address dosage ranges, safe, dangerous levels. We would like to have pediatric red flags, pregnancy red flags, ethnicity red flags, and a place to check the integrity of the product.

We would like the web site to encourage CAM education and experiences all the way down to the elementary school level.

A suggestion was to check case law to avoid charges and the liability of non-inclusion of groups, and we would do that through creating tight parameters for linkages.

Both in the Internet and the media, disseminate information on an ongoing and regular basis.

Specifically under the media, we would encourage the media to use the web site as a credible resource of information. The concern was then disseminating the information to citizens at as many levels as possible.

Some new ways to disseminate the information would be, for example, to utilize librarians and make sure they are well educated.

We could create a partnership with the American Library Association to aid the patrons, and through their education, they would be able to aid the patrons and access to information and education about health.

We talked about new avenues of educating the populace, those that don't have access to the Internet and maybe not even TV on an ongoing basis. We don't know how to do it yet, but we thought that churches, elementary schools, hairdressers, PTA groups, hospitals, community health resources, and hospices could all be part of that dissemination of information.

We encourage media who address health issues to have and experience the different CAM modalities and services, and through their own personal experience, they would be able to address the subjects more totally.

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