INTERNATIONAL PREVALENCE OF CONSULTATION WITH A NATUROPATHIC PRACTITIONER: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A bstract Objectives Naturopathy is a traditional medicine system informed by codified philosophies and principles, and an emphasis on non-pharmacologic therapeutic interventions. While naturopathy is practiced by approximately 75 000 to 100 000 naturopathic practitioners in at least 98 countries, little is known about the international prevalence of history of consultation with a naturopathic practitioner. This study reports a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies describing the global prevalence of history of consultation with a naturopathic practitioner by the general population. Setting The included literature was identified through a systematic search of eight databases between September and October 2019, as well as the grey literature. Participants Studies were included if they reported the prevalence rate of consultations with a naturopathic practitioner by the general population Interventions Survey items needed to report consultations with a naturopathic practitioner as defined in the country where data was collected, and not combine naturopathic consultations with other health services or only report consulations for illness populations. Primary and secondary outcome measures Primary measures used for the analysis was consultations in the previous 12-months. Other prevalence timeframes were reported as secondary measures. Methods Meta-analysis of prevalence data was conducted using random effects models based on individual countries and World Health Organisation (WHO) world regions. Results The literature search identified eight manuscripts summarizing 13 studies reporting prevalence for inclusion in the review. All included studies had a low risk of bias. Meta-analysis of the included studies by world region found the 12-month prevalence of history of naturopathy consultations ranged from 1% in the Region of the Americas to 6% in the European and Western Pacific Regions. Conclusions There are up to 6-fold differences in the prevalence of naturopathy consults over 12-months between and within world regions, which may be driven by a range of policy, legislative and social factors. S trengths and L imitations of this study Naturopathy is one of the most commonly used traditional and complementary medicines in the Western world and this is the first systematic review and meta-analysis reporting the prevalence of consutations with a naturopathic practitioner. This study includes only includes data published after 2010 to ensure the results are contemporary, however this may have excluded some studies in countries with older data. The results are limited by the poor availability of data reporting consultations with a naturopathic practitioner, including in countries where a large number of naturopathic practitioners are known to provide care.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.047 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.018 | 0.041 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".