Investigating How East Asian Medical and Biomedical Systems Can Communicate: A Qualitative Exploration of How East Asian Medicine Concepts Can be Used in Modern Health Research

Purpose There is much published science supporting East Asian Medicine (EAM) as a treatment for many health issues. Public Health has made great advancement in understanding the effects of health disparities globally. East Asian Medical Models offer additional ways to think about health disparities. Methods Twelve participants who are Biomedicine and/or Eastern Medicine experts or social scientists were identified from the research team’s network. Our goal in this purposive sample was to represent diverse backgrounds, educational and professional experience, expertise, age, gender, and geographic location. Following IRB approval, all potential subjects identified for recruitment agreed to participate and were consented. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each subject on the Zoom © platform, and ranged between 60 and 90 minutes. Recordings were transcribed and checked for accuracy, and double coded for themes. Any disagreement in coding was addressed in discussion between the coders. We assessed the data for saturation on key content areas, and when finding repetition of themes, chose to complete the stage of data analysis. Next, we employed a thematic analysis to better understand the key concepts. Results Seven main themes emerged from the interviews. These are necessary areas to consider when considering health disparities: THREE TREASURES, PATIENT PROVIDER RELATIONSHIP, ASSESSMENT OF HEALTH STATUS in EAM, PRENATAL ESSENCE, POSTNATAL ESSENCE, DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH, BELONGING. Conclusions Scientific discovery and health care will improve with improvement in communication between medical practitioners and scientists from EAM and Biomedicine (BM). We use our data to consider ways that the EAM model of health can add to our understanding of the effects social disparities on health.