Center for Traditional Medicine
Bridging Ancient Science with Modern Wisdom
Founded in 1977, the Center for Traditional Medicine (CTM) has been a pioneering force in clinical practice, research, policy development, and social change, applying traditional medicine through a feminist, social justice, and Indigenous-centric lens.
Meet Dr. Leslie Korn, founding director of the Center for Traditional Medicine, dedicated to healing, education, and traditional ecological knowledge since 1977.
The Mother of All Medicine
Traditional medicine is the foundation of all healing systems. More than 80% of the world’s population relies on traditional medicine for primary health care.
Traditional medicine is grounded in the deep relationship between living beings and the natural world, evolving from the earliest human and animal efforts to restore health.
CTM preserves, educates and innovates within these systems to ensure their continued relevance and accessibility.
Our Journey Over Time
Explore the key moments, people, and projects that tell the story of CTM’s journey over time—built through partnerships, cultural exchange, and a shared vision of healing and sustainability.
Founding of the Center for Traditional Medicine, a public health natural medicine center in Yelapa, Cabo Corrientes, Mexico.
A multidisciplinary natural medicine team has delivered over 50,000 clinical hours of pro bono care to Indigenous residents of Cabo Corrientes. The focus includes traditional medicine approaches to pain, type 2 diabetes, domestic violence and trauma, and infectious diseases, complemented by community educational classes.
CTM offers annual seminars on Traditional Medicine in rural Mexico, providing health professionals with experiential education in traditional medicine, bodywork therapies, culinary medicine, and medicinal plant knowledge. These seminars supported the free health clinic while creating employment opportunities for women in the village, fostering intercultural learning and exchange.
CTM joins the Center for World Indigenous Studies and begins collaborative work in education, research, policy, and clinical care.
CTM receives funding from the Minnesota Foundation to conduct a three-year Women’s Community Trauma Study. During this period, the team establishes a sewing collective, provides health promoter training, expands outreach to neighboring villages, and welcomes individuals from other communities.
Delivery of over a dozen training programs on culture, food, and medicines for the prevention and treatment of diabetes to tribal & First Nations health educators, clinicians, and administrators.
CTM contributes to the International Encyclopedia of Women’s Studies’ entries on ‘Traditional Medicine,’ ‘Asian Traditional Medicine,’ ‘African Traditional Medicine,’ and ‘Australian Aboriginal Healing.’
Leslie Korn publishes study, “Burying the Umbilicus: Traditional Medicine on the West Coast of Mexico”, both in English and Spanish.
CTM produces the documentary Cradling the Heart, which showcases Dr. Leslie Korn and her team’s work bringing medical massage for Type 2 diabetes to rural communities in Cabo Corrientes. It received the award for Best Short Film at the 2025 Quetzalcoatl Indigenous International Film Festival.
In collaboration with the Comunidad Indígena de Chacala in Yelapa, CTM produces the documentary Searching for Capomo. The film explores the nutritional and medicinal value of the capomo tree while also addressing the challenges this imperiled tree now faces.
Advancing Traditional Medicine for Today’s World
Our mission is to blend Indigenous traditional medicine with complementary and integrative medicine, creating holistic, equitable health care solutions. We focus on:
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Conducting research and providing clinical education that integrates Indigenous healing systems with modern medicine.
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Applying local knowledge of medicinal plants and wild foods to support community health.
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Advancing social justice through equitable health care initiatives.
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Exploring the relationships between trauma, domestic violence, mental health, physical health, and the healing process.
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Enhance cultural competency in health care by training practitioners to respect and apply Indigenous perspectives.
Our Areas of Focus
Explore the core themes guiding our programs and initiatives. Each links to additional information or opens a dedicated section:
Medicinal Plants and Wild Foods
The Wild Plants and Herbal Medicine Project has been active since 1975. We document and preserve Indigenous knowledge of healing plants and foods in western Mexico and the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
Grounded in community collaboration, the project uplifts local priorities and supports traditional ecological knowledge, ethnobotany, and ancestral practices while integrating biomedical insights.
Our work honors and advances traditional medicine as essential to integrative, culturally grounded healthcare while advancing food and health sovereignty.
Traditional Medicine for Trauma & Mental Health
Our work prioritizes the experience of trauma and its ongoing aftermath as central to Indigenous peoples’ daily lives. We advance healing methods, rooted in Indigenous knowledge systems, for individuals and communities that are informed by the diversity of global cultures and the colonial experience.
We believe interpersonal, historical, and community trauma can be addressed by also incorporating nutrition trauma—the loss of traditional foodways and access to the healing gifts of nature that nourish mind, body, and spirit. We blend Indigenous knowledge with holistic practices. Culture—cult as in worship, and ure, earth—holds the root to healing the mind, body, and spirit.
Deconstructing Type 2 Diabetes: Tradition as Medicine
Type 2 diabetes is a dis-ease of modernization, chronic stress, and the loss of traditional lifeways. Our ancestors did not experience type 2 diabetes. Our project integrates globally informed, culture-specific foods, herbs, massage, and movement with the best of natural medicine to support individuals and communities in defining their own paths to balance and revitalization.
Our projects bring pro bono health care to rural Indigenous peoples, design and develop educational programs, books and videos, and educate clinicians in heart-centered, effective clinical strategies to bring about community and individual change
Watch our award-winning 30-minute documentary Cradling the Heart.
Explore the Latest Edition of The Fourth World Journal
Women’s Traditional Medicine, Indigenous Knowledge, and Wisdom Ways
This special issue brings together interdisciplinary and community-based perspectives on women’s traditional medicine, Indigenous healing systems, food sovereignty, land-based knowledge, and cultural resilience.
READ THE FULL ISSUEThank You to Our Donors
Elina Vesara
Ostern Fund
