Values, paradigms and research in family medicine

Family medicine continues to struggle for a legitimate place in academic medicine, largely because it has not yet built a research base to compare with other medical disciplines. The problem lies in a conflict between the research method and the interests of traditional medicine, which is dominated by the disease model of health, and the new principles of health care evolving within the discipline of family medicine. The disease model is not just a research model but also the basis of the political structures of modern medicine in academic medicine and society at large. It, therefore, has political and value implications that will need to be confronted if family medicine is to establish its research agenda successfully.