National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health

Abbreviation	NCCIH (formerly NCCAM)
Formation	1991 (as Office of Alternative Medicine) 1998 (as NCCAM)
Type	U.S. government agency
Headquarters	Bethesda, Maryland
Official language	English
Director	Josephine P. Briggs, MD
Parent organization	National Institutes of Health
Affiliations	United States Public Health Service
Website	nccih.nih.gov

The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) — formerly the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), and before that the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) — is a United States government agency which investigates complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). NCCIH is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH) within the Department of Health and Human Services of the federal government of the United States. The NIH is one of eight agencies under the Public Health Service (PHS) in the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

NCCIH was established in October 1991, as the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM), which was re-established as NCCAM in October 1998 and again as NCCIH in December 2014. The name change to NCCIH has been discussed as an attempt by the center to mitigate criticism, such as to avoid the term "alternative" and to distance itself from having funded studies of questionable merit.

NCCAM's mission statement declared that it is "dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative healing practices in the context of rigorous science; training complementary and alternative medicine researchers; and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals." As NCCIH, the mission statement is "to define, through rigorous scientific investigation, the usefulness and safety of complementary and alternative medicine interventions and their roles in improving health and health care."

Joseph M. Jacobs was appointed the first director of the OAM in 1992. Initially, Jacobs' insistence on rigorous scientific methodology caused friction with the office's patrons, such as U.S. Senator Tom Harkin. Sen. Harkin, who had become convinced his allergies were cured by taking bee pollen pills, criticized the "unbendable rules of randomized clinical trials," saying "It is not necessary for the scientific community to understand the process before the American public can benefit from these therapies." Harkin's office reportedly pressured the OAM to fund studies of specific "pet theories," including bee pollen and antineoplastons. In the face of increasing resistance to the use of scientific methodology in the study of alternative medicine, one of the OAM board members, Barrie Cassileth, publicly criticized the office, saying: "The degree to which nonsense has trickled down to every aspect of this office is astonishing ... It's the only place where opinions are counted as equal to data." Finally, in 1994, Harkin appeared on television with cancer patients who blamed Jacobs for blocking their access to antineoplastons, leading Jacobs to resign from the OAM in frustration. In an interview with Science, Jacobs "blasted politicians - especially Senator Tom Harkin... for pressuring his office, promoting certain therapies, and, he says, attempting an end run around objective science."