Founded in 2005 by Paige Ruane and Patrick Kearney, Integrative Medicine Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the physical, intellectual, environmental, and economic health of communities in sub-Saharan Africa through the research and development of traditional medicine.
Our initial focus stemmed from frustration with a medical system biased toward Western allopathic medicine. If 70% of pharmaceutical drugs originate from traditional medicinal plants, and 80% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa relies on traditional medicine to treat their healthcare needs, what is stopping the widespread use of traditional medicine in healthcare policy and delivery worldwide? Creating the foundation was the first step in our search for answers to this question.
Our research led us to East Africa, where we met with indigenous practitioners of traditional medicine and learned about their diagnostics and treatments – healthcare solutions that have been at work in African communities for thousands of years.
We discovered that the development and distribution of medicine outside the Western medical system faces an almost impossible legal and technical maze: a gauntlet of rules and protocols that bar the development of traditional medicine, but approve plant-derived pharmaceutical drugs worth billions of dollars a year – effectively devaluing the resources and intellectual property of indigenous cultures.
In just four years Integrative Medicine Foundation has partnered with leading traditional healers in East Africa, and implemented a pilot program in Buyijja, Uganda that is paving the way for a clinical trial of a powerful malaria treatment developed from traditional medicine.
Our initial field studies have shown that full-scale research of traditional medicine will bring evidence-based treatment options to the fight against disease in the developing world, while wide-scale production and distribution will forge a critical new path to economic sustainability in the region.
Integrative Medicine Foundation is a New York–based 501(c)(3).