The New York Botanical Garden is a center for botanical research, an historic New York City cultural institution, a museum of plants, and an international model for public education in the plant sciences. Through its scientific programs, known collectively as the International Plant Science Center, the Botanical Garden provides global leadership in research on plant diversity, applying its findings toward developing solutions to some of humanity's most urgent needs.

The New York Botanical Garden's Institute of Economic Botany (IEB) was founded in 1981 to focus a portion of the Botanical Garden's research enterprise on applied botanical questions of great human concern. The field of economic botany uses interdisciplinary approaches to study the relationships between plants and people, including use of plants in traditional healthcare. Botanical Garden scientists in the IEB use all of this information to help people to use their natural resources in a way that improves their health and quality of life and that conserves the natural environment over the long term through its sustainable utilization.

Support from the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation is enabling The New York Botanical Garden to integrate biodiversity conservation with improved healthcare, including training physicians in ethnomedical practices, with a current focus on the Pacific islands of Micronesia, including The Federated States of Micronesia (Pohnpei and Kosrae) and The Republic of Palau.

For more information visit: www.nybg.org