Allied Organization: HOHM Research
Established in 2017 as the research arm of the HOHM Foundation, HOHM Research focuses on high-end, robust research outputs focused on the clinical work and results using homeopathy — professional, medical, and naturopathic. Headed up by Research Director Alastair Gray, PhD, and Denise Straiges, the work of the office is to ask relevant, high-impact, meaningful research questions relating to practice, clinical outcomes, history, education, economic evaluation, safety, and cost effectiveness related to homeopathy.
Gray says, “The research questions we ask are not the laboratory-based, basic or fundamental research questions that have dominated the homeopathy research landscape for the last decades — such as ‘how does it work’ — but the kinds of questions more relevant to the fields of public health, health services research, and integrative medicine.” Example might be: what outcomes do we get; are we safe; what does it cost; and are we efficient?
Therefore in the last couple of years, the research office has published in homeopathy-specific journals such as Homeopathy in 2024, 2023, 2022, and the International Journal of High Dilution Research 2023, but more broadly in integrative medicine journals such as an article on Characteristics of Users of Homeopathy in the United States in the journal OBM Integrative and Complementary Medicine, a piece in Advances in Integrative Medicine on Clinical Outcomes in Chronic Conditions: an observational case series employing the MYMOP outcome measure, and in Integrative Medicine Reportson Effectiveness, Safety, Accessibility, Efficiency, and Appropriateness of Homeopathy in an Epidemic in 2024.
At the heart of the HOHM Research Office initiatives is the Practitioner Generated Research Network (PGRN), a one stop shop for practice-based, patient-focused, and practitioner-generated research that potentizes the profession of homeopathy and expands it into the larger scientific and integrative medical communities.
At the research office, the current initiatives include two clinical trials: one in Brazil on the management of Silicosis miners, as well as a four-arm clinical study with a focus on Post-Partum Depression, as well as a study on the use of Artificial Intelligence in homeopathy. Later in 2025, emphasis will shift to rolling out of a large cohort-based study. Additional research work pertains to an analysis of the data collected from nearly 4,500 COVID cases seen through the Homeopathy Help Now initiative, (a coalition of professional practitioners and students working to further the mission of HOHM Foundation to provide accessible homeopathy care), and numerous research studies specific to a clinical initiative focused upon healing services in palliative and end-of-life care called Comfort Care. HOHM is currently raising funds for these projects and you can see the scope of their work, past, present and future here.