The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), a component of the National Institutes of Health, has received funding to set up new research centers on complementary and alternative medicine.
The initiative will support three main areas : centers of excellence for research on CAM, developmental centers for research on CAM, and planning grants for international centers for research on CAM.
"These programs are designed to enlist researchers from multiple disciplines - in both conventional medicine and complementary and alternative medicine - to apply their expertise to advance complementary and alternative medicine research," said Dr Stephen E. Straus, director at NCCAM.
The centers of excellence provides grants (P01) to projects investigating the action of CAM therapies. Future awards will provide new opportunities for experienced molecular or cellular biologists, imaging scientists, immunologists, neurobiologists, pharmacologists, physiologists, and other scientists to investigate fundamental questions related to CAM, said the organisation.
Developmental centers will support U19 cooperative agreements in which CAM and conventional institutions and investigators team up in exploratory research projects. Planning grants for international centers will fund exploratory/developmental grants (R21) so that US and international institutions can work together to study traditional/alternative healing approaches.
The planning grants will lay the groundwork for developing applications for an international center for research on CAM, to be called for in 2004, said the NCCAM.
Requests for applications and program announcements for these opportunities are available on NCCAM's website.