Chinese herbalists and health promotion in Chinese American community

My research explores new ways in community-oriented health promotion by bringing traditional herbalists' practice with public health campaigns of disease prevention and health promotion in Chinese American community.

In spite of the increasing interests and research on Chinese herbs as a new source for pharmaceuticals by medical science community, little research has been done in the United States on whole herbs as they are actually used by herbalists and general Chinese Americans in daily life. As a result, herbalists' contributions in health care among Chinese and other minority groups have been under-estimated, if not completely overlooked, by public health researchers. The primary concern of my paper is to explore the feasibility of incorporating Chinese herbalists as a special kind of community health workers in disease prevention. My research is based on focus group study with herbalists and anthropological ethnographical study in Chinatown San Francisco in the summer of 2007. I am most interested in whether herbalist can be recruited as a special kind of lay health worker with increased efficacy on disease prevention in Chinese communities.

The conclusion is twofold: first, Chinese herbalists not only share common health beliefs and cultural values with their Chinese clients, but also broadly involve in various social-political networks among Chinese American community. Second, Chinese herbalists have strong motivation and certain degree of authority on distributing health prevention knowledge including cancer prevention among Chinese Americans.