As my 8-year old daughter likes to say, “We dreamed this work up together.” Our donors, partner organizations, care-providers and clients form a powerful circle of reciprocity, in which each one of us heals and cares for ourselves and our communities. This circle grows each year.
In 2023 we provided 2,362 bilingual, bicultural direct healthcare services to 527 clients, 93% of whom identify as Latine and Indigenous people. Latine and Indigenous people in Sonoma County experience staggering health disparities shaped and sustained by current social and economic inequities. Botanical Bus healthcare services are mobile because residential segregation- by race and ethnicity, income and occupation- is a social determinant of health. Botanical Bus healthcare services are bilingual because 4 in 10 of the 29,000 undocumented immigrants residing in Sonoma County do not speak English (Lewis, 2021). Botanical Bus healthcare services are bicultural because positive mental health outcomes can be better achieved through valuing cultural wealth (Adams & Chavez, 2016).
We are excited to announce new partnership with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), West County Health Centers and Santa Rosa Community Health to make warm referrals into primary care. The Botanical Bus mobile, bilingual, bicultural wellness programs overcome the barriers that exist for Latine and Indigenous people in Sonoma County to accessing regional health care homes, which include driving distance, hours of employment, language, technology and trust. In the words of a Botanical Bus client: “I take care of myself by coming here to receive services with the Botanical Bus. I feel comforted and heard by all the people who are here to help.”
Botanical Bus services are founded and led by Latine and Indigenous healthcare professionals who belong to the communities we serve, who share life-experience with our clients, and who receive ongoing training in anti-racist, trauma-informed care. We create safe spaces of belonging for Latine and Indigenous people through culturally centered care. We recognize that racism is a root cause of anxiety, depression and other mental health problems in our communities. We center herbalism and nutrition because it is at the heart of Latine and Indigenous healing traditions.
As LuLu Pérez Centurión, traditional healer and Promotora CHW who leads an opening blessing circle at every Botanical Bus clinic shares: “todos somos medicina y nos sanamos la una a la otra” [we are all medicine and we can heal one another]. Thank you for circling up with us this year and sharing in the radical love that guides our work.
Adames & Chavez (2016). Cultural Foundations and Interventions in Latino/a Mental Health (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315724058
Lewis, Kristen. A Portrait of Sonoma County: 2021 Update. New York: Measure of America, Social Science Research Council, 2021.
