CIZG stands for Consortium Integrative Medicine and Health
The CIZG is a collaboration between two academic hospitals, two top clinical training hospitals, a GGZ organisation and a knowledge institution.
- Haga Hospital (specializations in paediatrics and haematology)
- Lentis
- Louis Bolk Institute
- Máxima Medical Center
- Radboudumc
- Rijnstate
- The CIZG wants to contribute to the development of sustainable and responsible integrated healthcare by making existing knowledge better available and initiating new scientific research.
- The CIZG wants to offer an infrastructure in which academic and non-academic institutions work together to develop, disseminate and carefully implement knowledge about integrated healthcare
- The CIZG thereby wants to promote health and well-being and to reduce and prevent illness and suffering.
- The CIZG also cooperates with similar consortia in the US, Canada and Brazil.
The CIZG strives for a healthcare system that study and treats people and their health and illness in an integrative and scientific way. It is about a patient-oriented approach with a broad view of the entire person, in a healing environment. In addition, the focus is on increasing health and quality of life. The regular treatment offer can be supplemented and combined with a selection of effective and safe lifestyle interventions and complementary treatment methods.
Our healthcare is successful, especially with serious and acute conditions. However, not everyone gets better. Chronic disorders are increasing and the Dutch live longer with chronic disorders, often several at the same time. Moreover, we attach increasing importance to life as healthy as possible.
Many of these patients have meaningful questions and an unmet need for healthcare. They are looking for ways to relieve their chronic complaints, to alleviate the side effects of regular treatments and to improve the quality of their lives. They see complementary treatment methods as a possible solution.
Just like in other European countries, every year millions of people in the Netherlands use in addition to regular treatments also self-medication products and complementary treatments. However, they and their regular practitioners often do not know where to turn for expert, substantiated and safe advice.
They look for new ways to improve their chronic burden, alleviate the side effects of regular treatments and improve the quality of their lives. They see complementary treatment methods as a possible solution.
Because regular healthcare and complementary treatment methods are often located in “separate worlds” and patients fear a negative reaction from their doctor, patients often do not share the use of complementary treatment methods with their healthcare professional. Complementary treatment methods generally have few side effects. However, this is not always the case, for example with interactions between herbs and medication. To prevent this, the CIZG advocates access to good information and uses five due care criteria.
The CIZG offers an infrastructure in which academic and non-academic institutions work together in the field of integrated healthcare, research, education and policy. From there, knowledge about integrated healthcare is developed, bundled and disseminated.
No, the CIZG wants to prevent scientifically unfounded, bad and or dangerous treatments (quackery) from entering medicine. It does want to provide a substantiated answer to the unmet healthcare needs of many patients. CIZG wants to provide as many safe and effective treatments as possible. At the same time, healthcare must be taken against unproven therapies and / or unreliable therapists who harm patients.
Good scientific research must distinguish between new innovative visions/ treatments and dangerous/careless treatments. Only when the treatments have proven to be safe and effective can they be applied. In this way, the CIZG strives for the best of both worlds, whereby a well-founded and nuanced middle ground is sought, based on scientific research. To guard against the extremes of “embracing with blind faith” and “an out of hand dogmatic rejection” of complementary treatments.