COVID-19 has illuminated the disparities within health literacy across our country. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, only 12% of Americans have proficient health literacy skills. Health Literacy is defined by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information needed to make appropriate health decisions. In the South Bronx, the situation is even worse; it is the poorest urban congressional district in the country. As a result, many residents suffer high rates of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, asthma, HIV/AIDS, and infant mortality. Though health outcomes improve in wealthier communities, such as Manhattan, African-Americans still die at a higher rate than whites, regardless of where they live (The Institute For Family Health).

To gain insight into health literacy within the Bronx, I spoke to Kaniya Samm, Head of Operations at Radical Health. Radical Health contributes greatly to improving the level of health literacy in New York. Located in the Bronx, the corporation uses indigenous restorative circle practice to create space for a new kind of dialogue between clinicians/healthcare providers, researchers, service providers, and community members. It is the first Latina owned and operated Public Benefit Corporation in New York City.

Previously, Kaniya had worked at a non-profit in Chicago, where she realised that they were simply replicating the same healthcare systems that kept people sick and ill. “We were not doing anything different or innovative that was community-centred,” she commented. That’s why she looked for a place and profession that would allow her to look at health holistically and give back to that health ecosystem when she moved to New York. This led her to join Radical Health. “At Radical Health we are a health tech start-up,” Kaniya explained, “we combine the power of people and meaningful conversations as well as technology to really create change in the healthcare landscape.”

Health literacy is related to how people engage with healthcare, a huge part of improving health literacy in the Bronx is to focus on the community. Interacting with the community and listening to them really helps the health system to better comprehend the concerns of the people within the district. The Bronx is a very diverse community, with a majority of its inhabitants being African-American, Hispanic or Latino. With discrimination from the healthcare system towards these minority communities, there is a lack of interest from the medical world to communicate with them and in return, leading to their distrust of the healthcare system. Within the Bronx, Radical Health is helping to bridge this disconnect; they have created a chat-based platform Know Your Rights, where users and community members can reach out and ask questions about health issues they do not understand.

“Given the rise of Covid-19, a lot of folks were asking what is Covid-19? What are the symptoms? How do I protect myself?” Kaniya said, referring to the sort of questions coming in on the Know Your Rights platform. “On the other end, we had medical students from Mount Sinai and other health community members answering those questions for folks.” This began a dialogue between community members and the health world, giving them access to medical information in a way that they can understand. The way medical information is provided contributes greatly to health illiteracy, as the use of complicated medical terms can often make it inaccessible for many. Radical Health ensures that health information is transmitted to the community in a comprehensible way.

According to Kaniya, there are two key things that contribute to health illiteracy in the Bronx community, the lack of trust in the healthcare system and the way the information is provided. “When you don’t trust something you don’t engage with it. Folks don’t have faith that the healthcare system or provider will give them information that will truly help or heal them,” she noted. To be able to improve health literacy Kaniya suggested that we focus on centering the voices of the community first. “And that is exactly what we’re doing at Radical health,” she stated, “here, all solutions come from the voices of the community. First, you listen to a person’s lived experiences and from there you can build solutions and relationships. I feel like that is the core of a better health community.”

Start Lighthouse supports Radical Health in their endeavor to tackle the issue of health illiteracy in the Bronx. We believe that understanding and engaging with the community around us is an essential step towards improving health literacy across marginalized communities.

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