Traditional Health & Medicines

To respect the data sovereignty of our partners, most of the project details are available to partners only. Please feel free to contact the UPROOT team should you have any questions. If you are meant to have access to any of these projects, please email the team at uproot.team@ubc.ca.

Mapping Traditional Medicine Workshops

The herbologist and doula at the health centre for a BC First Nation currently offers workshops to the community on local traditional medicines and plants. Certain plants only grow during specific times of the year, making the window to offer workshops fairly short. This project was a collaboration between pharmacy students and the First Nation to create a booklet outlining the workshops offered each season, corresponding with the availability of plants used in traditional medicines.

The project members interviewed the herbologist to gather relevant information. A booklet was created to present the workshops offered by the herbologist and information on the plants’ availability by season and traditional uses.

Community Partner(s)

Sheila Bikadi

Student(s)

Chasz Hodgson, E2P PharmD Student
Alisha Bains, E2P PharmD Student

Granting Agency/Partner(s)

None

Partner Access

Visual Summary of Traditional Medicines

The health centre for a BC First Nation delivers holistic health services through four sub-departments, one of which specializing in Traditional Healing. They are guided by the First Nation’s traditional principles and values and aim to integrate traditional methods into all their practices. The community has identified a need to summarize traditional uses of local plants in a visual medium to be easily shared and displayed. This project created a visual summary of traditional medicines and local plants used by the health centre’s local expert herbologist, in efforts to preserve and revitalize traditional medicines knowledge.

Project members conducted research using online resources, community partner interviews, and other community-specific sources including existing pamphlets and handouts to create a poster visualizing summaries of local plants and their common uses. The traditional medicines were translated into their traditional names.

Community Partner(s)

Sheila Bikadi

Student(s)

Naheed Ahmadi, E2P PharmD Student

Erin Harding, E2P PharmD Student

Granting Agency/Partner(s)

None

Partner Access

Developing a Traditional Medicine Intake/Referral Form

The health centre for a BC First Nation delivers a variety of holistic health services, including traditional healing and medicines. This project created a patient intake and referral form for the health centre’s traditional knowledge keeper to assist with referral to services.

An environmental scan of available patient intake forms for both non-traditional health clinics and traditional health clinics was performed. A patient-friendly resource was designed based on findings of the scan and important characteristics identified by the knowledge keeper. The resource includes intake forms for patients and/or their providers, as well as groups requesting workshops and teaching sessions on traditional medicines.