A new health resource, WellnessEvidence.com, launched this week as the first website that provides direct access to the current medical evidence for 24 of the most mainstream wellness approaches. With thousands of clinical studies evaluating the effectiveness of approaches from chiropractic to weight loss, the site was designed to make it easier for the millions of people seeking alternative health solutions, for medical professionals selecting courses of treatment, and for companies designing employee wellness programs, to research wellness alternatives at the most authoritative sources of evidence-based medicine. The site is a Global Wellness Institute (GWI) project and was previewed at GWI's Global Wellness Summit in Morocco last fall. “Wellness is a massive $3.4 trillion global sector, but with explosive consumer markets, misinformation on the latest fad diets or ‘miracle’ cures can spawn. This new site, with transparent access to the same databases doctors use, is a much-needed, ‘spin-free’ wellness research zone,” says Susie Ellis, president and CEO of the GWI. “And while medical studies on wellness approaches are typically radically under-funded compared to traditional medicine's drugs, devices, and procedures, there’s an important, growing body of evidence to explore. People have questions: Is there strong evidence that acupuncture benefits chronic back and neck pain? Long-term smoking cessation? That highly symptomatic stress significantly increases risk of early death? The answers are yes, no, and yes—and whether the evidence is positive, inconclusive or negative, it’s searchable at Wellness Evidence.”
Key site features include:
Research Channel: The heart of the website is its research platform, which allows users to search four highly respected, evidence-based medical databases—Natural Standard, The Cochrane Library, PubMed and TRIP—to access the universe of meta-reviews and clinical trials on the 24 wellness approaches. Each pre-searched database has a unique strength; more info on the databases is available here.
Research Spotlights: For each wellness approach, selected medical studies are showcased to introduce users to the nature and diversity of the research available.
Studies in the News: Recent headline making articles on the medical evidence for wellness approaches are aggregated, allowing users to read about complex medical studies in an easy-to-digest way.
Studies-in-Progress: Users can search for clinical trials on wellness underway both in the U.S. (via ClinicalTrials.gov) and globally (via the World Health Organization site).
Conversations and Contributions: Visitors can contribute studies about wellness approaches, as well as share their own experiences and outcomes.