Herb Research Foundation - Herbs and Herbal Medicine for Health

Educating the world about herbs
for almost 20 years

The Herb Research Foundation (HRF) is the world’s most comprehensive source of accurate scientific information on medicinal plants. Since 1983, HRF has been educating the public, health practitioners, legislators, and the media about the health benefits and safety of herbs, drawing on a specialty botanical library containing more than 300,000 scientific papers on thousands of herbs and multiple online sources of clinical, pharmacological, chemical, and horticultural information. HRF was founded and is directed by Robert S. McCaleb, an internationally recognized authority on scientific and regulatory issues affecting herbs.

If the work we do is important to you, please join us in supporting the future of botanical medicine!

Our primary mission is to foster improved world health and well being through the informed use of herbs:

1. To encourage and support research into the benefits of herbs, and to establish a solid scientific foundation for their use as foods and medicines.

2. To serve as a reliable source of information on the safe and appropriate use of medicinal plants and herbal products for the public, professionals, legislators and the news media.

3. To publish and disseminate accurate research information to researchers and the public.

4. To promote the rational, informed use of herbs in preventive medicine to improve and maintain health and lower health care costs.

5. To promote and participate in programs and activities that return serious medicinal plant study to prominence at American universities and medical research facilities.

6. To support developing countries in their pursuit of rational, cost-effective health care with natural remedies, and to help preserve traditional health care systems through identification, preservation, and cultivation of important plant remedies threatened by over collection.

7. To raise awareness about and protect threatened medicinal plant species in the United States and abroad, and to help save undiscovered medicinal plants from extinction.

8. To form a liaison between the American herbal movement and the worldwide scientific community.

9. To increase the sustainable cultivation of herbs as hardy cash crops for farmers in both developing and developed countries.

10. To bring natural product medicines back into legitimate use in modern health care.