The National Foundation for Alternative Medicine uses a systematic and rigorous process to identify therapies and assess their effectiveness and potential benefits in clinical practices. To ensure that NFAM has the methodology to find therapies that work, the Investigative Strategy has three levels:

Site Visits
Site visits are used to screen clinical practices around the world to identify non-toxic, low-cost, innovative therapies for chronic conditions and to determine the feasibility of data collection.

Field Investigations
Once site visits have identified promising lines of inquiry, NFAM staff reviews medical records of the practice.  If warranted, NFAM conducts retrospective studies and evaluates research data to determine if treatments merit further evaluation.

Clinical Outcomes and Pilot Studies
Treatments deemed worthy of further study following a retrospective field study are targeted for rigorous studies.  NFAM then conducts low-cost outcomes studies to collect preliminary data on the safety and efficacy of potential breakthrough treatments from around the world, and shares this information with members of the scientific community.