Each year, Utne Reader puts forward its selection of world visionaries and has chosen Tabatha Parker, ND, founder of Natural Doctors International (NDI). “The global health care system is in crisis,” says Parker. She notes that it relies on the exportation of a Western model to developing countries that can’t afford it. Parker sees NDI as a bridge between exported conventional medicine and centuries-old indigenous healing techniques, such as the use of herbal medicine, which in some places in the world is the dominant type of health care. “That has to be a part of the system if you’re going to actually reach people,” Parker says. Naturopathic doctors “are trained in a way that no one else in the world is trained: to be [that] bridge.” NDI has a location in Nicaragua and it has worked with the World Health Organization’s traditional medicine arm to broaden its understanding of natural medicine. Parker sees NDI becoming a sort of Doctors Without Borders for naturopaths and she hopes to establish permanent sites worldwide that all serve as a link between old and new.
