Event overview
with Sarah Ramadhita, PhD candidate and Dr Tom Fearon, anthropologist and Together Better coordinator for the Nightingale practice in Hackney.
‘Cultivating Menopause’ aimed at identifying the way herbal remedies can be used to address health inequalities related to menopause affecting those from minoritised backgrounds.
The project was developed in collaboration with Together Better Hackney’s services for volunteers organised around GP practices which also engage with social prescription and the Hackney School of Food in May and June 2025. The project aimed at co-creating accessible knowledge about the use of herbal remedies helping with common negative symptoms of menopause that can be used as part of ‘Green Social Prescribing’ (GSP) and developing a template for use by community groups.
We started by finding out about herbs that would help with symptoms in multiple contexts and used the herb garden to learn about different essential oils and later on recipes using herbs growing in the garden and in and around the UK. We then had some taught cooking session with herbs that have beneficial effects and were harvested by participants and shared delicious food we cooked together, which added a wonderful social note to the experience.
This series will hopefully act as a pilot to develop more such simple and low-key nature-based interventions and activities to improve women’s mental and physical health around menopause that can be implemented in primary health care settings and replicated at home.
The talk will focus on the template, but also highlight ethnographic details that shaped the way the project worked out, and that may be of interest to those engaged in research on the way herbal interventions can address reproductive health inequalities locally across the UK.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Dec 2025 | 5:00pm - 6:30pm |
Accessibility
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