UAE Backs Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine With Four National Commitments
The United Arab Emirates has placed integrative medicine squarely inside national health policy, setting out four commitments intended to strengthen traditional, complementary and integrative medicine through evidence, regulation and coordinated implementation. Announced at the Al Shifaa Summit for Integrative Medicine in Abu Dhabi, the commitments are tied to the UAE National Integrative Medicine Strategy and aligned with the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034. The framing matters because the debate around traditional medicine is no longer limited to cultural preservation or consumer preference; in this setting, it is being tied to standards of care, clinical governance and measurable health-system planning.
The four commitments are ambitious in scope and deliberately practical in their sequence. By 2028, the UAE aims to advance national policy for traditional, complementary and integrative medicine practices, including regulatory frameworks, standards of care and evidence-based clinical guidelines to support quality, safety and effectiveness. By 2027, the country plans to develop its first National Integrative Medicine Research Agenda, intended to guide scientific research, evidence generation and innovation around national healthcare priorities. The third commitment focuses on education, workforce capacity and public awareness, with local and international collaboration designed to improve professional competencies and support informed adoption of TCIM practices. The fourth seeks to expand partnerships, knowledge exchange, cross-sector cooperation and public-private engagement, positioning the UAE as a global leader in TCIM while linking the agenda to healthy living, disease prevention and longevity.
One sentence captures the policy shift cleanly: the country is moving from broad endorsement of integrative care to a structure in which regulation, research and training are expected to move together.
Research, Regulation and Workforce Development Are Being Treated as a Single System
The summit discussions repeatedly returned to the same clinical and operational question: how can integrative medicine be incorporated without weakening standards for safety, quality or effectiveness? Speakers emphasized that integration should be guided by scientific evidence and supported by effective governance. That is not a rhetorical flourish. It reflects the reality that once a therapy enters a health system, even a long-standing traditional practice, it affects prescribing behavior, patient expectations, training needs, surveillance, and accountability for adverse outcomes.
H.E. Safeya Abdulazeez Al Maqtari, Acting Secretary General of the UAE Integrative Medicine Council, presented the commitments as part of the council’s effort to advance the national strategy and contribute to the WHO strategy through 2034. Her presentation also pointed to emerging collaboration between the UAE Integrative Medicine Council and the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre, with detailed arrangements still moving through the relevant processes. The institutional message was clear: national action is being coordinated with the global policy framework rather than developed in isolation.
Representing the WHO Global Traditional Medicine Centre, Dr Geetha Krishnan Gopalakrishna Pillai, Unit Head for Traditional Medicine Research, Data and Innovation, welcomed the UAE’s attempt to translate global priorities into national action. She said the UAE is demonstrating how countries can advance evidence-based integration while maintaining strong standards for quality, safety and effectiveness. She also pointed to national research priorities aligned with WHO’s global research priorities and agenda for traditional medicine as a way to strengthen coordinated research, data generation and responsible innovation.
The emphasis on research is not incidental. In integrative medicine, evidence gaps are often the difference between a practice that is culturally valued and one that can be safely incorporated into routine care. A national research agenda can define which interventions deserve priority evaluation, which populations warrant study, and which outcomes should be tracked beyond symptom relief alone. Those questions matter in settings where multiple traditional systems are already in use and where regulation must account for variation in training, preparation, dosing and supervision.
Abu Dhabi Summit Signals Regional Pressure for Stronger Standards
During a panel on building the evidence ecosystem for integrative medicine, Dr Ahmed Alosi, Research Consultant at the National Center for Health Research of the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention, described the country’s evolving research environment and plans to identify national priorities for TCIM research. Dr Thekra Mohamed, Division Director for Drugs and Medical Products at the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, focused on the need for rigorous approaches to safety, quality and effectiveness while still allowing responsible innovation. Those two positions sit together more comfortably than they might first appear: innovation in this field will not be credible unless regulators can define which products, procedures or practices deserve confidence and under what conditions.
A regional perspective came from Dr Adi Al-Nuseirat, Technical Officer at the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, who pointed to the growing need for regulatory frameworks across the region and referenced the UAE’s experience in regulating multiple traditional medicine systems. In practical terms, that experience may become increasingly relevant to neighboring health systems trying to move beyond fragmented oversight. Regulatory frameworks determine whether practices are integrated as evidence-generating clinical tools or left in a gray zone where quality varies and patient risk is harder to measure.
The summit outcomes reflect broader momentum to integrate traditional, complementary and integrative medicine into health systems in ways that are evidence-based, safe, effective and people-centred. The UAE’s commitments concentrate that ambition into four concrete policy tracks: implementation, research, education and partnership. Each track depends on the others. A research agenda without standards of care is difficult to operationalize; education without evidence risks perpetuating inconsistency; and partnerships without governance can drift toward messaging rather than measurable clinical value.
What remains unresolved is the degree to which these national commitments will produce published guidance, research outputs and regulatory tools that can be assessed in routine care. The article does not specify implementation mechanisms beyond the stated timelines, and the clinical impact will depend on how rigorously the UAE converts policy language into standards, surveillance and training over the coming years.