Our HIstory

    The journey to re-imagining health care began on my 6th birthday in Ghana. The father of one of my closest friends was a physician and the family was late to my party. Being six, I had been disappointed she was late until her father explained to me that he was the only doctor for a number of villages, and several people were very sick. I decided, in that moment, I would become a doctor, opening a clinic “where everyone could get help.”

   Over two decades later, I earned a Master’s Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM), and completed an internship at Yu Huang Ding Hospital in Yantai, China. My work in China inspired me to consider integrating health systems, incorporating indigenous methods of healing with allopathic medicine. After graduation, I gained approval of the clan chief, acquiring land in my family’s village, Kukurantumi, Ghana, to build an integrative medicine clinic.

I am passionate about equity in healthcare and education. Early clinical volunteer experiences for community events and organizations such as CHIPS (Community Health in Partnership Services) clinic for the uninsured and underinsured helped shape my views and interest healthcare policy changes.  In 2008, I founded Universal Holistic Healthcare as a means of bringing together similar minded health practitioners.  Through a collaboration with Living by Design, founder Shawn Tucker and I (through UHH) worked to provide wellness services to those living with HIV/AIDS.  An additional grant from Missouri Foundation for Health and the Feuerbacher Grant from the Sisters of St Joseph allowed us to provide a support group, Women of the Phoenix Project,  for women living with HIV/AIDS and STI prevention education to the St Louis Metro area.  UHH eventually took over the Living By Design Clinic and expanded services to include substance abuse detox services,  a community-style low cost clinic open to all ($10/session), and trauma-informed care for those who were survivors of War or Torture.  UHH, through its staff and volunteers provided acupuncture, massage, physical therapy (through Brentwood Center of Health), free counseling, child care (to those utilitizing services), dietary counseling, yoga classes, 

Later grants through the Olin Foundation and Zimmer Biomet's Movement is Life Project funded targeted integrative care  for the Operation Change StL programs, in addition to ongoing community health education workshops and lectures. Heavy reliance on peer education and support helps to ensure positive reinforcement and systematic change.

UHH also began mentoring other small start-up nonprofits with similar goals of health empowerment through fiscal sponsorship while they were in process of establishing federal 501(c)(3.

As a result of ongoing community work, and seeing the necessity of changing health policy, the Sankofa Integrative Health Clinic has expanded to an integrative medicine community health worker training program.  Though construction has temporarily halted while the virtual educational platform is being built,  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.