BLACK AGRARIANISM AND HOLISTIC WELLNESS: CO-CREATING AN EVIDENCE-BASED COOPERATIVE MODEL WITH THE ENBLOOM COLLECTIVE

Abstract

Background: Community agriculture has been shown to promote multiple dimensions of health and wellness, particularly for historically and presently marginalized populations. For Black Americans, agricultural practices carry unique cultural, historical, and spiritual significance, serving as both a site of trauma and a strategy of healing resistance. Holistic wellness frameworks highlight the interconnectedness of physical, mental, environmental, social, occupational, economic, and creative wellbeing. However, few programs explicitly integrate Black agrarian traditions into culturally responsive holistic wellness interventions.Purpose: This study implements a community-driven, systematic investigation to explore the feasibility and acceptability of the enBloom Collective, a Black-led holistic wellness and agricultural cooperative in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Guided by community-based participatory research (CBPR) principles, the study contributes to the body of evidence and community alignment for cooperative-based wellness programming. Methods: The study is organized into three aims. Aim 1 is a scoping review of the literature on agricultural cooperatives and wellness programs, identifying dimensions of wellness, theoretical frameworks, and culturally specific approaches relevant to Black/African American communities. Aim 2 uses a convergent mixed-methods design to evaluate barriers, facilitators, and cultural-contextual factors in launching the enBloom Collective, drawing on survey responses from mailing list subscribers and semi-structured interviews with practitioners, consumers, and board members. Aim 3 assesses the feasibility, cultural appropriateness, and acceptability of enBloom’s signature programs—Schools enBloom and Communities enBloom—through semi-structured listening sessions with program participants, parents/guardians of participants, and partner organizations. Results: The scoping review of the literature found that there were very limited published studies about programs that integrate multiple (three or more) dimensions of wellness through agriculture-based programming. Of those that integrated multiple, few also grounded their programming in culture highlighting the need for programs like the enBloom Collective to be systematically evaluated and for the findings to be published in academic spaces. In the mixed-methods aim of the study, the participants highlighted the need and desire for the enBloom Collective to be present in their community. Participants aligned mostly with a solidarity cooperative model with an expert panel of key decision-makers and full transparency to all members. Participants prioritized mental, physical, and social wellness but recognized that the dimensions were deeply interconnected, recommending an eighth dimension be added, spiritual wellness. Finally, in the evaluation of Schools enBloom and Communities enBloom programming, participants celebrated the possibility for generational wellness impacts and talked about logistical barriers and facilitators for feasibility and acceptability of programming including flexible and multiple time options, follow-through, and hands-on learning. Participants emphasized that affinity spaces and places where cultural identities were celebrated were paramount and should be done in a way that everyone can find a space to belong. Significance: By combining critical race praxis, community resilience frameworks, and holistic wellness models, this study generates evidence for community-driven holistic wellness and agricultural cooperatives as a culturally rooted public health strategy. Findings will inform the enBloom Collective’s cooperative model, strengthen wellness programming by and for Black communities, and contribute to broader efforts to advance health equity through culturally responsive, agriculture-based wellness initiatives.