The intersecting paradigms of naturopathic medicine and public health: opportunities for naturopathic medicine.

Complementary medicine research, including naturopathic medicine research, is plagued with many methodological challenges. Many of these challenges have also been experienced in public health research. Public health research has met these challenges with a long history of multidisciplinary, multimethod, and whole systems approaches to research that may better resonate with the ?real world? clinical settings of naturopathic medicine. Additionally, many of the underlying principles of naturopathic medicine are analogous to the underlying principles and activities of public health, specifically in such areas as health promotion, prevention, patient education, and proactive rather than reactive approaches to disease management and treatment. Future research in the field of naturopathic medicine may benefit from adopting public health research models rather than focusing exclusively on biomedical models. A complementary and collaborative relationship between these fields may provide an opportunity to deliver research that more accurately reflects naturopathic medicine practice, as well as providing the opportunity to improve health outcomes more generally.