2003 Campus-Community Partnerships

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Seeds of Health and Community: Service, Education, and Research Through a Medicinal Garden in East LA

Abstract:

The Center for Dietary Supplements Research: Botanicals (CDSRB) at the UCLA Center for Human Nutrition, and the Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC) are building an interdisciplinary collaboration with Proyecto Jardín, a nonprofit organization that directs a community- and school-based garden in Boyle Heights, with support from White Memorial Medical Center (WMMC). The scientific, evidence-based evaluation of herbal medicine applied at the CDSRB will be integrated with the WAC's ethnographic approach to documenting ethnic healing traditions and carried out through the creation of an organic medicinal plant garden in cooperation with Proyecto Jardín.

The product will be a hands-on educational exchange between UCLA and an inner-city, predominantly Latino community with a strong cultural predisposition to use herbal remedies. Service will include financial and technical assistance in the installation of raised beds and medicinal herbs, to be maintained by community members. Teaching will include an eight-week workshop concerning medicinal plant cultivation and use. Research will address the question of how this intervention affects participants' attitudes toward both traditional herbal medicine and conventional Western medicine. Students and faculty from UCLA will play a major role in this endeavor. Project deliverables will include a training manual, herbal cookbook, publishable report, video documentary, and ongoing presentations.