Alternative medicine's potent attraction for boomers and seniors

Ever since Harvard's David Eisenberg, MD, published his groundbreaking findings in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 (for example, that there were more visits to complementary or alternative medicine practitioners in 1990 than to all general practitioners and family practice physicians combined; and 83 million adults were spending about $11 billion on alternative or complementary medicine), interest in the marketplace implications has grown. Anne Alexander, editor of Prevention magazine, and Leah Kliger, principal of The Lakes Group, Lake Stevens, WA, provided some new information at The Alliance For Healthcare Strategy and Marketing's Annual Conference in March.