Abstract
Background:
Alternative medicine researchers and policy makers have classified prayer as a mind–body intervention, and thus, a modality of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). As such, numerous epidemiological surveys of CAM utilization—which have included prayer—depict increasing CAM use, particularly in specific racial and ethnic groups.
Objectives:
This paper discusses the implications of conflating prayer and CAM, especially regarding the definitions of both concepts and the resulting statistics of CAM utilization.