Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM)

From the Associate Director

Welcome to the online home for the NCI Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM).

This section of the site provides information about the definition of CAM, OCCAM’s Organization, Staff, and research.

As a health care practitioner or patient, you will find useful information on CAM approaches for cancer. For example, you can learn about evidence-based summaries – called Physician Data Query (PDQ®) summaries –  on specific CAM therapies, such as acupuncture and coenzyme Q10. Our site also provides information about the NCI Best Case Series Program which, though no longer active, used rigorous scientific methods to evaluate the use of complementary and alternative medicine by healthcare practitioners worldwide for the treatment of cancer.

If you are a scientist interested in doing cancer CAM research, this site offers information about Topics of Special Interest, which can direct you to active funding opportunities, conferences and workshops.

We invite you to review OCCAM’s web site to check out these resources. Your input is always welcome on how we can improve the site’s usefulness. We hope this website will help generate increased dialogue – especially between patients and their health care professionals – about the appropriate uses of CAM, in conjunction with conventional medicine.

Thank you,

Jeffrey D. White, M.D. 
Associate Director