Non Conventional Medicine (NCM): Italy’s Health Systems and the New Health Paradigms Cover Image

Non Conventional Medicine (NCM): Italy’s Health Systems and the New Health Paradigms
Non Conventional Medicine (NCM): Italy’s Health Systems and the New Health Paradigms

Author(s): Mara Tognetti Bordogna
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Editura Eikon
Keywords: Non Conventional Medicine; Person-Centred Medicine; Regional health systems; Sociology of health

Summary/Abstract: After analysing the factors behind the mounting demand for Non Conventional Medicine (NCM) worldwide, paralleling loss of ascendancy on the part of western biomedicine and its increasingly unsustainable cost, we focus on the new paradigm of Person-Centred Medicine, and how NCM holds pride of place within that paradigm. Our article goes on to analyse the Italian scenario in the light of the ever-greater insistence by individuals on personally-tailored treatment and the new health paradigms. Although legislatively Italy (2013) is one of the most backward countries on the European scene where NCM is concerned, the regional health systems are nonetheless responding to NCM. In order to show to what extent that is so, we focus on three major regions each typical of a health system approach and a geographical area: Lombardy, Tuscany and Campania. We show that Italy is indeed still in the first stages of including NCM or Person-Centred Medicine, and that the process varies widely across the independent regional health systems. Policy here is often dictated by factors in the local background.

  • Issue Year: 11/2013
  • Issue No: 03
  • Page Range: 58-69
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English