Recent Grants (2011)

In 2011, Bragg supported many leading organizations including the following:

Dear Dr. Patricia Bragg,

The recipients of the 2010 Paul C. Bragg Global Health Scholarships have been honored by your generosity and as you will see – our 2010 choices will impact many people due to the caliber of recipients and projects they have used their scholarships to support. Natural medicine is growing globally because of the Paul C. Bragg Global Health Scholarship. With your continued support, in addition to scholarships, we will
offer NDI student members free membership to the world renowned Global Health Council. My deepest gratitude to you for your commitment to your father’s dream. To show our appreciation we have put together these letters of appreciation from the second group of recipients of the Paul C. Bragg Global Health Fund.

With sincere gratitude,
Dr. Tabatha Parker, ND; NDI Executive & Medical Director

Dear Dr. Patricia Bragg,

I want to express my appreciation to the Paul Bragg Scholarship Fund for supporting my visiting to work with NDI in January- February 2010. As an herbalist and teacher in the US, the skills I learned while working with NDI are invaluable to me as a clinician, and the lessons gained working in this environment are being passed on to my students, helping increase their awareness of natural medicine practice in poorer countries and prompting them to help the underserved.

As an herbalist, I have been involved in applying herbal first aid in unconventional circumstances for over 15 years. After working in Ometepe, I have gained new valuable insights and practical skills to apply while working with patients in situations where medical options are limited. Dr. Tabatha Parker is doing extraordinary things with NDI. Not only did I gain practical skills, I got to see how a group of people could bring health care options in the form of natural medicine to places where they are generally inaccessible. This is dear to me, as an herbalist whom rarely sees natural medicines being offered as an option.

So thank you very kindly for providing me with this opportunity. Please know, that the knowledge and skills gained from this scholarship are being spread far and wide and will help herbal and other natural medicine be affordable, available and accessible to many who otherwise would not have the opportunity. Sincerely and then some, 7Song

Director, Northeast School of Botanical Medicine
Director of Holistic Medicine, Ithaca Free Clinic
Ithaca, NY

Dear Dr. Patricia Bragg,

It is with deep appreciation and gratitude that Mexico’s
scholarship recipients, Dr. Jacqueline McGrath and Maya midwife Maria del Carmen Duran Moreno, write to you with a story of triumph. After years of serving her community from her own room and the U Najil Ts’aak community clinic, Carmen’s dream of having a “Casa de Partos” (birth center) is nearing fruition – in large part thanks to the Paul C. Bragg Global Health Scholarship. Carmen started attending births with her mother almost fifty years ago and later studied chiropractic with her father. She has become a treasured elder in the town of Bacalar, Mexico, combining these and other natural healing modalities to create her own style of Maya traditional medicine. Carmen’s vocation and commitment to her community are clear; she charges patients whatever they can afford – oftentimes a few coins and sometimes nothing at all. Carmen loves to teach and hopes that her Casa de Partos can serve as a training ground for future midwives and other natural healers. The Bragg Foundation has helped a woman who will continue to help many, many people for the rest of her life. See http://ndyucatan.com/ and http://bacalarmedicalfund.blogspot.com/ for more information on the ongoing project.

With deep gratitude,
Jacqueline McGrath, ND
Bacalar, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Maria del Carmen Duran Moreno is the proud recipient of the Paul C. Bragg Global Health Scholarship. A traditional midwife since age thirteen, Doña Carmen has helped birth countless babies during the last forty-seven years. The scholarship
has made it possible for her to buy needed medical equipment and educational materials for the new birth center she is spearheading to serve her community. Carmen sincerely thanks Dr. Patricia Bragg for helping furnish the center where she can expand her teaching and natural healing practice. Carmen loves to share her knowledge of traditional Maya midwifery and looks forward to visiting students and
apprentices who can help with her important work.

Since 2008, Carmen has participated as a volunteer and practitioner at a holistic community clinic called U Najil Ts’aak (‘House of Healing’ in Yucatec Maya), a project started with assistance from NDI. Together with naturopathic physician Jacqueline McGrath, Carmen has been invited to teach traditional Maya massage at two international midwifery conferences in 2010 and finds herself increasingly sought after as an elder teacher of the natural medicine traditions that she learned from her mother, a midwife, and her father, a traditional Maya bonesetter. Carmen serves a growing marginalized segment of the population – women living as squatters in the jungle on the edge of the town of Bacalar. These women arrive at Carmen’s home for their births and she attends to them lovingly in her own bedroom, charging nominally or sometimes nothing at all, depending on their circumstances.

Carmen has dreamt of having a Casa de Partos (birth center and clinic) made of concrete, a relative luxury after decades of working from her one bedroom wood and tarpaper house. Her sons, Jorge and Cornelio, had begun the foundation for the clinic room next to the family’s existing house. In October 2010 Carmen presented a workshop at a MANA midwifery conference in Tennessee, returning home with new inspiration and donations from the midwives she met. The Bragg scholarship was a much needed boost in the construction fundraising, leading to the completion of the masonry for the birth
center and clinic.

Dear Dr. Patricia Bragg,

Thanks to your generous scholarship, I was privileged to complete a summer 2010 internship for Natural Doctors International targeted at advancing naturopathic medicine participation in international work. My internship role was to assist in formation of the Naturopathic Medicine Global Health Council as a representative consortium for the purpose of establishing participation in worldwide humanitarian medical relief and disaster response.

The internship culminated successfully in an inspiring international public forum on global health that occurred on August 13, 2010 at the Portland Convention Center in
conjunction with the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians annual convention, and completion of a global health survey administered to naturopathic physicians and students. The survey will provide baseline information for the Naturopathic Global Health Leadership strategic planning.

The public forum gave the entire naturopathic community an opportunity to share experience and analyze and address policy and ethical practice issues in international medical relief and disaster response work. The forum encouraged interested leaders
and students to begin engaging in dialogue. The public forum presentation also created an opportunity to broadcast the naturopathic medicine accomplishments of several emerging international health organizations, college efforts and individual volunteerism. Representatives from many affiliate organizations attended from around the globe. The event was a first step in acknowledging the important work that ND’s are already doing. One participant, Dr. Ysu Umbalo, expressed great pleasure at having an opportunity to make contacts and exchange ideas with peers. He expressed that his work at Mercy and Care International (MCI) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa can be isolating and an opportunity to network and establish an organizational collaborative will further add credibility to his work and government grant eligibility.

I am grateful to have had an internship opportunity to make a contribution to establishing a new consortium of healthcare leaders dedicated to global health. The internship has inspired me to dedicate my senior thesis to the integration of naturopathic medical professionals into global health systems models of healthcare and education.

Sincerely,
Susan Yirku
Interdisciplinary studies major focusing on building collaborations at Marylhurst University in Portland, OR.

Dear Dr Patricia Bragg,

I would like to take my time to thank you for the scholarship that was sent to ZINARE through NDI. The US $1000 went a long way in the development of Naturopathic medical education in Zambia and Africa. The Zambia Institute of Natural Medicine and Research (ZINARE) is the first of its kind in Zambia and the highest institution of learning in the field of Naturopathic medicine in the WHO Africa Region. The
establishment of ZINARE has given hope for the integration of traditional medicine in the health care system of Zambia. The use of traditional, complementary and alternative
medicine has risen in Zambia because of the HIV / AIDS epidemic in the Sub-Saharan countries of Africa.

We appeal to your continued support to see ZINARE grow bigger and bigger. I would also like to take this opportunity to invite you to come to Zambia to see the impact your scholarships are having on people across the globe.

Yours in health,
Lawrence Chanza, ND
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Zambia Institute of Natural Medicine and Research