The ‘Barefoot Doctors’ Serving America's Cities

According to acupuncturist and herbalist Julia Bennett, her interest in the practice started when she was a child in 1950s North Carolina, where a knowledge of herbs was of vital importance in her community. “I grew up during Jim Crow and the height of segregation. We didn’t have access to doctors and hospitals,” she explained. “We were third people, so we had to use herbs.”

These days, Bennett lives in Brooklyn and is a founding member of Third Root, a community health center in the Ditmas Park neighborhood. The center’s mission is to provide healthcare with an orientation towards social justice, offering acupuncture, yoga, therapeutic massage, and herbal medicine on a sliding payment scale. “Acupuncture has become a moneymaker,” Bennett says, “So we want to make sure that everything we do is accessible and affordable to all people.”