Universal Holistic Healthcare 2024 Update

Universal Holistic Healthcare (UHH) is a 501c3, Missouri nonprofit, founded by Afua Bromley, DACM, L.Ac.,, in 2008, that works to promote integrative healthcare services to underserved and under-resourced communities both domestically in the United States and globally.

UHH has three primary objectives:

1. To improve the quality of life through health for all people; particularly those who are in underserved, under-resourced or economically disadvantaged areas, through service and healthcare education.
2. To provide affordable, holistic, integrative healthcare including, but not limited to the modalities of acupuncture, herbology, bodywork, nutritional counseling, detoxification for substance abuse, and other indigenous methods of healing.
3. To promote an international network of holistic health practitioners with a similar vision to create societies in which all people, regardless of ethnicity, economic status, geographic location, or religious affiliation, have access to quality, affordable healthcare.

UHH has completed numerous projects in St. Louis, MO, including an integrative HIV/AIDS clinic (which later expanded to offer services for the entire community and acupuncture detox for substance abuse), low-cost acupuncture services through collaboration with Community Health In Partnership Services (CHIPS) clinic for uninsured/underinsured, community education health workshops, and STI prevention education events. UHH is also working towards the construction of Sankofa Integrative Medicine Clinic and Community Healthcare Worker Training Center in Kukurantumi, Ghana, West Africa. The Training Center will help educate a cadre of community health workers holistically trained in health promotion, disease prevention (priorities around HIV/AIDS, COVID-19) and treatment of uncomplicated and non-severe illnesses, such as cases of malaria, diarrhea, mild pain management techniques, and malnutrition (particularly maternal and child nutrition) in the community. The training center and public health worker training program timeline is closer to 2030 given the amount of infrastructure that needs to be created and deepening of collaborative relationships that need to happen.

Virtual Health Empowerment Education Platform

UHH is creating a virtual (mostly free) education platform that will provide a reliable source of easily accessible, culturally responsive, holistic, supplemental health information about the prevention and management of disease and obtaining optimal health and well-being, especially to those who are underserved or marginalized. The platform also seeks to increase the visibility of those practicing traditional forms of medicine/healing, presenting them as equal resources and providers of care. The virtual health empowerment platform currently being designed and will do a soft launch December 2024/January 2025. The initial focus of the 3–5-minute educational videos will be on prevention and integrative medical management of diabetes and hypertension. Several White House Scholars in the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM) Fellowship Program have begun to create the video content database, but more volunteer practitioners from various disciplines will be needed to create content. Formal volunteer recruitment will begin in mid-November/December 2024, but if you are interested, please email me at afua@universalholistichealth.org.

Community Health Clinic in Ettokrom, Ghana

In 2024, UHH also began fundraising to help complete a small rural health clinic in Ettokrom, Ghana. Construction should be complete by December 2024-January 2025. The facility will have 3 public health nurses and will serve as the launch site for the supplemental integrative medicine training curriculum for the nurses in 2025. The clinic will serve 3000-5000 people in Ettokrom and the surrounding areas.

The Cervical Cancer Screening in Ghana with community prevention education and medical personnel training in projected for 2024 was shifted to 2025 due to schedule conflicts with UHH’s collaborating partners. The Cervical Cancer Initiative will work to train physicians, nurse/nurse-midwives and other qualified health professionals to utilize thermal coagulators to treat women at high risk for cervical cancer, provide post-treatment care and prevention education for medical and traditional herbalists. A hand-held battery-operated thermal ablator can be used in place of the more expensive cryotherapy or loop excision treatment on cancerous tissue with similar efficacy. This project will provide at least 6-10 thermal ablators for shared medical use at three different urban and rural facilities in Ghana. Cervical Cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer in Ghanaian women.

Herbal Research in Ghana

One of the future collaborators with UHH is the Center for Plant Medicine Research (CPMR) in Mampong, Ghana. The Mission of CPMR complements the World Health Organization (WHO) Traditional Medicine Strategy, which seeks to support traditional and complementary practices, products and practitioners to help keep the world population healthy. In 2023, UHH helped support the 2nd Annual Oku Ampofo Memorial Herbal Research Conference hosted by CPMR. Plant medicine plays an important part of traditional culture and healing, but establishing a research center grew out of a directive from Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. President Nkrumah sent physician and Traditional medicine healer, Dr. Oku Ampofo, to China in the late 1960s to observe how Chinese herbal medicine was used as part of the healthcare system. Dr Ampofo was inspired by his visit and his own experiences with herbal medicine as a child and pushed for the establishment of CPMR. Since 1971, CPMR has slowly increased in scope and function, having researchers interview and gather knowledge from Traditional healers, cataloging plant specimens, and developing commercial products based on the Ghanaian Herbal Pharmacopeia . There are now four (4) arboretums where cultivated herbs are grown for product development and a nursery which sells seedlings to farmers, herbalists and others interested in cultivating medicinal herbs. To date, CPMR has developed over 30 herbal products for a wide variety of ailments: malaria, topical pain ointments, headaches, benign prostatic hypertrophy, etc.. The Research and Development arm offers safety testing of herbal products to herbalists and nutraceutical companies in Ghana and other countries in Africa.

As the research on the efficacy of traditional herbal medicines continues and products are easier to for consumers to obtain there are increasing challenges around availability of herbs and quality control. As with some herbs in Chinese medicine, traditional herbalists stress that certain herbs must be harvested at a particular time of day to maximize potency and efficacy. Some wild herbs have been overharvested and now are only available if cultivated. There are growing concerns about the increasing use of pesticides and herbicides by local farmers, as well as soil and water contamination from illegal gold mining. Climate change has impacted everyone globally –water scarcity, destruction of the rainforest, sand theft, poor infrastructure, and contamination from illegal mining by foreign companies are major environmental issues in Ghana. CPMR, herbal companies, herbalists, scientists, and climate activists have been vocal about the adoption of stricter agricultural/business waste and environmental regulations. The sustainability of an increasingly popular plant medicine industry is a critical issue has been a topic of conversation at each conference. Plant integrity, soil organism diversity, overharvesting of certain plants, and competing interests of large businesses and smaller independent herbalists/consumers/healers/chief are also tied into the sustainability of the herbal medicine industry.

The Ghana Federation of Traditional and Alternative Medicine (GHAFTRAM) has approximately 25,000 traditional medicine practitioners registered (ghaftram.com/). The GHAFTRAM estimates that 70-80% of Ghanaians use some form of plant medicine or within cultural practice. For example, my mother, Nana Afoakwa Kyerewa, is the Dwumana Clan (Akan) chief for our village and uses plants for cultural practices that have spiritual and healing elements. There is not necessarily the division of function (spiritual, cultural, medical) that is found in Western society. Still, she is not considered one of the traditional healers; she is a custodian of culture. While traditional herbalists who learned their craft in an apprenticeship format similar to Classical Chinese herbalists, the Ghanaian university system has created Medical Herbalist academic degrees attempts to blend the Plant Research, basic medical training, and consolidated information from traditional herbalists. There are many similarities with Chinese culture and other indigenous cultures where plants are still used regularly by everyday people. In Ghana, everyone has their own malaria concoction – typically involving boiling leaves or bark from the nim tree (neem) to make a tea. A traditional herbalist I studied with almost 30 years ago showed me how to make an alcohol extraction from mahogany bark for fibroids and endometriosis. Today, there are fewer neem trees and mahogany trees are almost completely gone.

To donate or for more information on Universal Holistic Healthcare, please go to www.universalholistichealth.org.