Take Two Ginger Root and Call Me In The Morning 

By Kauthar B. Umar, MA


Closing the Gap, First Summit Packs the House • January/February 2003


“Do you know why people still keep going to curanderas


 and curanderos, (spiritual healers),?” asked Elena Avila,


 RN, MSN, Curandera. “Because it works, that’s why.


It works.”


In the United States, complementary and alternative medicine 

(CAM) is becoming a specialty, with racial and ethnic minorities representing a large portion of its consumers. Avila, a spiritual healer for 

25 years, says Curanderismo—a blend of African, Spanish, and indigenous medicine and medical techniques—is used among minority 

communities in the United States, frequently alongside western medicine. 

“I don’t treat a diagnosis. I treat the person,” said Avila. “You 

might come to me and maybe you wanted me to give you a magic 

herb for your diabetes. Then you discover I don’t have that, but I’ll 

help you with your nutrition. I’ll educate you. I’ll refer you to a 

physician. I have forty apprentices, most of them nurses, doctors, and 

massage therapists, with this idea of being inclusive,” stressed Avila. 

“I have one apprentice who is a doctor of oriental medicine, she’s a 

registered nurse, and now she’s an apprentice in Curandismo. I think 

that is our future.” 

For years, CAM has been misunderstood and rejected by practitioners of conventional medicine in the U.S. However, within the past 

decade it has grown in popularity among the American public and 

medical community, although skeptics remain. Today, many untested 

CAM treatments that aren’t used in hospitals or reimbursed by medical insurance companies are widely used by patients without their 

physician’s knowledge. 

In a 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association, article 

“Trends In Alternative Medicine Use in the United States 1990­

1997 Results Of A Follow-up National Study,” Dr. David Eisenberg, 

of the Center for Alternative Medicine Research and Education, Beth 

Israel Deaconess Medical Center, reported that 40 percent of Americans used CAM, although 60 percent of the time patients didn’t 

inform their physicians. 

Many patients opt not to disclose use of CAM to their physicians 

out of fear of embarrassment. Physicians, often reluctant to advise 

patients about CAM, either lack knowledge or believe it to be “witchcraft” and disregard it. Harmful side effects may occur if CAM is 

misused, and dangerous drug interactions can occur when combining 

certain CAM treatments with conventional medicine. Practitioners 

say this can be avoided with proper medical regulations. 

“Caribbean people living in urban areas in the United States, 

feeling physically removed from their native culture, will turn to traditional health remedies from their culture, just as everyone else does 

from different ethnic groups,” said Jacqueline A. Watson, DO, MBA, 

Take Two Ginger Root and Call Me In the Morning is based on Summit 

workshop Traditional, Complementary and Alternative 

Medicine in the Health Professions, Wednesday, July 10, 

2002 

of Health Concepts International, a health care management and 

consulting firm in Washington, D.C. “Providers must therefore enhance their communication with diverse populations and acquire the 

basic knowledge to understand culturally influenced health behavior.” 

Incorporating CAM 

Acquiring knowledge of culturally influenced health behavior is 

easier said than done. The lack of communication between health 

practitioners and patients who use CAM presents difficulty in assessing patients needs, argued Dr. John C. Pan, clinical professor and 

director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at George Washington 

University Medical Center. Dr. Pan stressed the need for cultural 

sensitivity and praised an ongoing study of limited-English-proficient Asian American patients of Chinese and Vietnamese descent in 

community health clinics nationwide. 

Supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 

this study is in the process of developing a questionnaire for use in 

evaluating the quality of health care provided to Asian Americans of 

Chinese and Vietnamese descent. According to Dr. Pan, research shows 

that many traditional healing practices present barriers to quality care, 

especially if providers lack sensitivity to these concerns, or are simply 

unfamiliar with CAM. 

“The questionnaire is culturally sensitive. It deals with cultural 

health beliefs and practices and it’s very important,” said Dr. Pan. “In 

the practice of traditional Chinese medicine, one of the common 

things is the belief that health reflects the balance of yin and yang, hot 

and cold elements, within the body. The traditional custom of rubbing the body with oil and a coin to release the cold element may 

result in a lot of bruises. When you don’t understand it you think 

there’s some abuse going on. These are the things to which health 

providers need to be sensitive. So, these are the things that will be 

incorporated in this questionnaire.” 

In an attempt to successfully integrate traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) into the U.S. medical system, NIH’s National Center for 

Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the University of Maryland, and the Health and Welfare Bureau of the Government of 

Hong Kong’s Special Administrative Region co-sponsored the workshop, “Enhancing the Evidence Base for Traditional Chinese Medicine—Practice Methodology and Grantsmanship,” in Hong Kong. 

Held October 30-31, 2002, the workshop created a forum to encourage further investigation and consolidated the evidence base for TCM 

as well as impacted the future of patient care and policy. 

Panelists agree that CAM’s legacy will continue to grow in the 

U.S., and the medical community must come to terms with this reality and embrace the challenge. Health professionals must become 

more culturally competent and this can begin in medical 

schools with the help of CAM experts from various ethnic 

continued on page 2>>>> 

Office of Minority Health Resource Center 1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 
Take Two Ginger Root and Call Me In The Morning 

By Kauthar B. Umar, MA


Closing the Gap, First Summit Packs the House • January/February 2003


communities. CAM practitioners believe, alongside conventional medicine, alternative medicine should be acknowledged and researched 

by the medical community to eliminate health disparities and ensure 

patients safety. 

“We need to engage the traditional practices out there and we 

need to create a dialogue to tear down the wall between the practitioners and patients,” said Dr. Pan. “We need to understand what herbs 

people are taking, and go from there.” 

For more information, contact the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Clearinghouse at 888-644-6226 or go to 

http://nccam.nih.gov/ or e-mail nccamc@altmedinfo.org

Office of Minority Health Resource Center 2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services