Public Attitudes Towards Health Policy and Alternative Health Care in Lithuania

Abstract

Taking over western social policy model, contemporary Lithuanian health care system (HCS) faces not only with the low trust in institutions but also with the changing biomedical position in the healing process. The increasing spectrum of chronic diseases and lay knowledge of patients, shifting doctor-patient relationship and all other indicators promote a rebirth of alternative medicine in Western societies. Although alternative health care has deep-seated traditions in Lithuania, however due to hegemony of biomedicine in contemporary society, alternative health care is limited to rare individual initiatives. The goal of this article is to identify public attitudes towards health care policy and alternative health care as part of health care system. The article employs data from the representative Lithuanian population survey conducted in 2011 under the International Social Survey Programme (module „Health“).

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ppaa.12.1.4011