Bonnie Bade

Bonnie Bade is a Medical Anthropologist whose work focuses on farmworker health, health care, California agriculture and farm labor, transnational migration, pesticide illness, and ethnomedicine and ethnobotany of Southern Mexico and California. Dr. Bade’s collaborative ethnobotanical research is on-going and centers on the medicinal and food therapy practices of Indigenous Mesoamerican communities living in both Mexico and California.

Dr. Bade’s research on the health of farmworkers over the last 30 years has facilitated national and state- wide professional collaborations with county departments of health, county hospitals, community-based organizations, NGOs, migrant clinics, national farmworker advocacy entities, California Rural Legal Assistance, Farmworker Justice Organization, National Center for Farmworker Health, National Pesticide Information Center, and more. She has conducted on-the-ground field research with farmworkers in nearly every county in California and participated as Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator in landmark studies concerning farmworker health, including the California Endowment’s California Agricultural Workers Health Survey of 2000 that resulted in $50 million dedicated to improving farmworker health.

Dr. Bade’s recent research on the impact of COVID-19 on California farmworkers with the California Institute for Rural Studies and migrant indigenous Community Based Organizations has led to policy recommendations, legislative briefs and press conferences with the California Latino Legislative Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Her research continues with current projects (2023) with the San Luis Obispo County Department of Health and a statewide study of pesticide illness perception among indigenous agricultural workers funded by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. See Farm Worker Study for more information.