title: Patterns of user disclosure of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate patterns of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use disclosure across medical and sociobehavioral factors and to provide a model that takes into account factors in explaining those patterns.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 21,849 CAM use episodes from 7347 respondents in the 2007 US National Health Interview Survey which involves the latest survey on CAM use.
  
  
  METHODS
  Respondents were a representative sample of US national population. Logistic hierarchical linear models specify how characteristics of users and their CAM use episodes influence user disclosure behaviors.
  
  
  RESULTS
  At the individual level, users were more likely to disclose CAM use to health care professionals when they had health problems and when they were insured. At the episode level, CAM use episodes were more likely to be disclosed when they were intended to treat a specific medical condition and recommended by a health professional. Disclosure rates were high among most susceptible users (ie, sick people intending to treat specific conditions with CAM) and among the biologically based CAM modalities (eg, herbal supplements) that are most likely to produce adverse interactions with conventional biomedical treatments.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  User disclosure was affected not only by users' demographic and socioeconomic characteristics but also by episode-specific factors. Efforts to improve provider-user communication of CAM use should consider the varying effects of these factors.
authors.affiliation: *Department of Sociology, University of Seoul, Seoul, Korea †Department of Health Studies ‡Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
authors.forename: Jae-Mahn
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Shim
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Farr A
authors.initials: FA
authors.lastname: Curlin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000529:Complementary Therapies / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012650:Self Disclosure; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States