Episode description
Sam Coffman Bio
Sam Coffman (RH[AHG], MSAOM) began his medical education in the military as a U.S. Special Forces Medic (aka Green Beret medic) in 1989. Prior to this six-year duty as a special forces medic he had already become highly interested in herbalism as a method to provide health care in remote regions with limited medical supplies, and he was able to use much of his special forces medic training to uniquely integrate the infrastructure and needs of field medicine with his own growing brand of herbalism that focused on effectively working with as many as 100 people per day in underserved or remote area herbal clinics, while also addressing community needs such as clean drinking water, food and medicine sustainability and first aid education.
Over the next 30 years, Sam’s goal became the creation of an integrative medical model that embraces aspects of western, eastern and local bioregional herbalism into a collaborative infrastructure with orthodox western medicine.
In 2007, Sam founded a school (The Human Path, AKA Herbal Medics Academy) that offers both online and on-site education in Texas and New Mexico.
Today, with nearly 20 faculty members at Herbal Medics Academy, whose experience span professions from medical doctors and nurse practitioners to midwives and clinical herbalists, Sam and his wife Suchil have developed and managed four main programs. These programs are: Austere Medicine, Clinical Herbalism, Advanced Medicine Making (Apothecarist) and Family Herbalism - which includes doula certification and emergency birth training.
As a part of the Austere Medicine Program Sam also teaches Wilderness First Aid and Wilderness First Responder certification as well as a more advanced wilderness medicine courses that also includes setting up and managing medical infrastructure in remote, post-disaster and austere environments.
Since moving during the summer of 2022 to the Taos, NM region, Sam is currently setting up the new Taos HMA campus and full-time clinic while prepping for board exams in order to obtain his NM acupuncture license and writing his next book for Storey publishing (“Survival Gardening”).
Sam’s current book “Herbal Medic” is in print and was a #1 Amazon best-seller in the Emergency Medicine and First Aid categories for over 9 months.