Health Voices

S2 E1: Bridging Healthier Futures: Health4US on Empowering Youth Through Health Literacy

• Public Health Coalition at Yale • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Welcome back to Health Voices! Tune in as we kick off Season 2 with an inspiring conversation about empowering youth through health literacy. Meet Reyhan Haider, a high school senior from Northern Virginia, whose passion for public health, sparked by personal experiences, led him to create Health4Us. Learn how early health education can prevent disease, enhance well-being, and navigate the U.S. healthcare system, especially during COVID-19.

Discover Reyhan’s youth-led initiative connecting uninsured individuals to healthcare via a Google Maps-powered web app, with plans to expand services and introduce a public health pilot course for sixth graders. This episode tackles challenges faced by uninsured communities, ethical considerations, vaccine hesitancy in Northern Virginia's Muslim communities, and more.

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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/health4us1

Website and Initiatives: joinhealth4us.com

Check out his books here:  https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0D65KMYQG?ingress=0&visitId=00187ad0-6f06-48c3-977a-9876f938759c&ref_=ap_rdr

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Speaker 1:

If there's one thing that I want people to know about health literacy, it's that it empowers you to take control of your own health. By being able to understand how to access and interpret and apply health information, you are able to make more informed decisions that can help prevent diseases and improve your well-being, and navigate the complicated US healthcare system with more confidence. And navigate the complicated US healthcare system with more confidence.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Health Voices, a podcast from the Public Health Coalition, an undergraduate organization at Yale University, where we bring forward the leading voices in health, innovation and entrepreneurship, providing a platform for addressing the leading public health challenges of our day. My name is Frederick Rivas-Georgi, and welcome to the Health Voices Season 2 premiere. We wanted to begin this season with a discussion of a critical part of healthcare that forms the foundation for the work we do at Health Voices health literacy. Health literacy is the ability to find, understand and use health information and services. The CDC reports that 9 out of 10 US adults struggle with health literacy and over 30% of teens face similar challenges. This issue disproportionately impacts racial minorities and the uninsured, worsening existing health care disparities. Most of the time, health literacy arises from poor health education in schools.

Speaker 2:

Today's special guest is Rehan Haider, an extraordinary high schooler from Northern Virginia who is fascinated with health literacy. As the founder of Health4Us, he works to inculcate health literacy from an early age, working with K-12 students across his home state. I will interview Rehan about the creation of Health4Us, the importance of understanding and addressing health literacy, and the exciting work he has planned for the future. Let's dive in Well. Good afternoon, rehan. My name is Frederick Rivas-Giorgi. Thank you for being on our Health Voices podcast today. We appreciate your coming, especially as a non-Yale guest.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure, thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to the talk.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for our audience. Rehan is a student from Virginia. He reached out to Health Voices to let us know about his work in health literacy and a lot of other health advocacy. I'd like to ask Rehan can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 1:

What do you think the audience should know about you and your work? Yeah, sure, so I'm a high school senior from Northern Virginia. I live in Loudoun County specifically. I've lived in Northern Virginia for most of my life actually like my entire life and, as we'll talk about in the podcast, I run an organization called Health for Us. When I'm not working on Health for Us, I also do research at NIH, read books, play table tennis. But yeah, a bit about me.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know Rehan's quite busy, like many high school seniors are, no doubt. I think the question that I and a lot of audience members have for you is what got you interested in public health so early, especially as a high school? That's really impressive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I had the chance to take a medical terminology class at Northern Virginia Community College during my sophomore year of high school, and in the class I was kind of introduced to this entirely new field of health and medicine that I found not only very interesting but also very important.

Speaker 1:

I was just coming out of the COVID year where, as most people know, we spent a year doing online school because of this pandemic. But when it comes to actually learning why or knowing why we had to spend a year away from school and what was going on in the world at the time, there wasn't much clarity. I had about this and especially I felt like the same way was with many of my peers and friends. You know questions like what is the CDC, what is the FDA and on like a more conceptual level, like you know what is the difference between a virus and an infectious disease. I didn't really like have the answer to many of these questions, and so taking this class kind of motivated me to learn more, and since then I've been able to expand my knowledge in the field and try to make an impact in the field, at least in my local community.

Speaker 2:

No, that's really quite important. I mean, especially, I think there were a lot of people especially in 2020 and 2021, who everyone all of these terms as you mentioned, like CDC and NIH were flying around and Fauci, and it suddenly felt like everyone knew what it was, but in the worst possible time. In that case, then, could you tell us a little bit more about your organization, health for Us? After you became interested in public health, how did you fall into this and create this organization?

Speaker 1:

A couple of different answers. So I was a bit disappointed that I hadn't been introduced to the field of health and medicine beforehand. I thought that if I had exposure earlier on I could have made a difference or tried to like done more than I have right now. And at the same time I recognized that had I not taken this class I probably would have waited till undergrad to get into this field and start to really make a difference. So that's one experience. Another is that I had a couple of family members battling various cancers when I was a kid breast cancer, colon cancer and you know, when I was young I didn't really like know what cancer was. Right, you know you can see the effects in hair loss, but actually like learning what was going inside their bodies was a different experience.

Speaker 1:

And I think the concept of early education in medicine and, you know, building health literacy is very important, especially to you know, be able to understand what happens in disease and then also finding how it's applicable to yourself right.

Speaker 1:

Knowing that these illnesses exist in the first place is actually like the first step to preventing them from happening to yourself in the unfortunate case.

Speaker 1:

And this field of like preventive medicine overlaps a lot with health literacy and that's kind of what I hope to do in the future overlaps a lot with health literacy and that's kind of what I hope to do in the future. But bringing it more on the public health side, as I said earlier, like health literacy is very important when it comes to like learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and especially for being able like, for being better prepared, at least for like the next pandemic whenever it comes right. We're hearing a lot about that currently in the news and school systems have like a very important position to play in accomplishing this right by, you know, by educating the next generation, and unfortunately, as of now, not a lot of schools you know do much in like public health education and even like health and medical education as a whole. So that's kind of the inspiration for the health for us. That's what we're trying to address. Health and medical education for youth yeah, no, I mean, I totally agree.

Speaker 2:

A lot of important topics. Of course. We teach math or reading comprehension skills to young students, K through 12. So why not health literacy? Could you tell us a little bit more how you bridge the gap between adults and young health literacy, especially since this is a field that you found lacking when you were growing up?

Speaker 1:

So there, is a lot of work being done in terms of improving health literacy in adults, but not that much in K-12 students, right? And as I said earlier, there's a huge overlap between health literacy and preventive care, and so I believe that, in order to make systemic changes in the future when it comes to improving health outcomes and then also changing and reforming the US health care system as a whole, tackling the idea of early education is really important and, briefly, I'd like to make a difference between distinguish at least like the difference between health literacy versus healthcare literacy, right, and what my organization specifically does. So health literacy refers to you know how well you know the medical science behind diseases, right, how does the heart work? What is the neuron? You know how do these different medications work. That's health literacy.

Speaker 1:

On the other hand, healthcare literacy is about knowing how to navigate the US healthcare system. How do I, like you know, choose a provider? What are the different types of like health insurance? What are these companies? I think that both are like needed in order to be successful, but our organization focuses more on health literacy, knowing the medical science, being exposed to that field, especially for youth. I found that this is an area that's lacking Currently. A lot of organizations focus on the health care literacy for adults, but I think health literacy is equally as important, but not as addressed.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, no, I mean, I agree. I mean, could you tell us a little bit more about, specifically, do you teach kids about the science of healthcare? What exactly do you do to distinguish from like an insurance policy versus this is an infectious disease?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So just like this is like going into like what we do as an organization. We have three main projects, I would say. The first is we have one of the cornerstone activity that we do is publishing our child's introduction to medical series. Right, we've published eight books in the series so far on topics ranging from child's introduction to cardiology to a child's introduction to human senses. So these books go at a truly introductory level into these topics.

Speaker 1:

If you search on Google right now, like introduction to the cardiac system, what you'll find is textbooks for, like college intro level classes, not really like for kids, just interested in kids who are parents who want to like expose their child to this field. So that's kind of our main activity, just publishing these books. We're now working on like donating these books to different schools and libraries. Secondly, we're trying to publish or pilot a public health course for sixth grade students in the northern Virginia area. This course talks a lot about you know what we were discussing earlier with you know teaching about what is the difference between a virus versus infectious disease, you know what are careers in public health, that sort of stuff. And then, thirdly, this isn't related to children specifically, but it's something that I find equally or that I find really important is about. We made a web app that links free clinics in the state of Virginia onto a consolidated network, and so those are the three main activities. We can go into more detail about any one of them if you'd like, but yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I'd love to go into. Before we do, I'd like to ask this is an impressively large operation you have. Could you tell us more about the sort of structure of this? I mean, I don't think one person could do this all themselves, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't think one person could do this all themselves, right? Yeah, yeah, no, it's not just me. I would say, across our three main initiatives, we have a lot of high school students and college students who are working on them. These students come from around the world and speak a variety of different languages, which is very unique and helpful, especially for the work that we're trying to do. We have people that make Instagram posts and manage social media accounts, and then we have a team that's leading the app development effort, and then we have a team that's working on editing these books that we get, and so, all in all, we have around 100 students who at some point contributed to one of these three projects.

Speaker 2:

No, it's really impressive, but I ask you as well about what sort of advisors does the organization have? Do you work directly with public health organizations, or who do you work with?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, right now it's just us. We unfortunately haven't been able to collaborate with well-established organizations. That's something that we definitely hope to do in the future, but yeah, right now it's just us, a youth-led organization, working on this problem.

Speaker 2:

That makes sense. Well, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to ask a little bit more detail about these, a couple of these three projects you're doing. One of the ones that specifically interested us when we looked was the website and the resources you have to connect uninsured to accessible resources in Virginia. Especially, I found one part of the map was clinics for non-English speakers, if I remember correctly. Could you tell us more about this app and what went into its creation, how this helps with health, literacy and whatnot? Sure, sure.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, I volunteered at a free clinic this past summer and I noticed that during my time there that each clinic kind of has their own sort of services that they offer and new patient procedures and, oftentimes, this information. Let me back up a bit. So, as you know, and I'm sure the audience as well knows, free clinics are one of the main types of main options for uninsured individuals to get care. Right, and they have. There's a huge need for them, but unfortunately there isn't that much information about like disseminating what each clinic offers. Right, as I said, each clinic offers their own sort of services, whether it's vaccinations, whether it's mental health care, whether it's dental care as well.

Speaker 1:

As each clinic offers has their own like new patient procedure, right, not all clinics have like the walk in policy, right, some have you have to create an appointment beforehand. Some actually have where you can only you can only be like referred by a primary care physician, right, and so for someone who maybe recently came to the US, needs care and doesn't have the sort of information, it can be hard to kind of like navigate and find the right clinic for you. So that's kind of where the app came in. We have the ability for users to kind of like filter based on the type of care that they need. Especially, as you mentioned, one of our filter options is services in Spanish, right? Not all clinics offer, or have that ability to provide information in another language, and so we've found those clinics that offer services in Spanish and allow users to kind of search based on that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's really important, especially, of course, the United States immigrant population is reaching, you know, 100-year highs in states like Virginia as well. Could you tell me exactly how members of your organization might be involved in this sort of project? Not just is there volunteering among these clinics, for example?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure, yeah, is there volunteering among these clinics, for example? Yeah, sure, so we used the Google Maps API to kind of design this web app. Right now it's only a web app. It hasn't been published to the App Store or anything. That's something that we're working on doing, so, yeah, so right now it's only in the state of Virginia. We had members kind of consolidate networks or these clinics based on the Virginia Association for Free and Charitable Clinics, vafcc. So our members kind of like went through each organization or each member that was a part of the VAFCC, consolidated this information onto a Google Sheet and then from that Google Sheet we were able to use the Google Maps API to kind of create this web app. Yeah, hopefully within the coming months we can try to expand this map and find the clinics in cities like Philadelphia and Boston and San Francisco, which there's a huge need for this sort of information there as well. Yeah, that's one of our future plans.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I hope that this at least can become you know this keeps growing and maybe becomes an app in the future. Another thing that we wanted to ask in regards to your programs in Virginia specifically, you were piloting a public health course for sixth grade students. I believe you mentioned that earlier. Can you tell us a little more? You know what that looks like introducing public health concepts to students in the area.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sure. So this public health class, I think we we we discussed like the reason for it, what it looks like. It's a 30 minute monthly lesson over the course of one year, so nine monthly lessons. We have a pre, pre and post survey for each lesson just to get like input from students on what's working, what they would like to see more of that sort of information. And then we also have created these teacher guides, which kind of like for teachers who don't have that much public health education. If they're looking to kind of like adopt this course, they can do so easily with these teacher guides. So that's one of the ways that we're hoping to make it like accessible and expanded. Right now we're trying to work with one school, but hopefully in the future, in the coming months, we can try to expand the course, reach out to more schools in the county.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Very good. If I might ask as well you think that this is a model that might be able to spread outside of where you are?

Speaker 1:

and how do you think you might be able to do that? Yeah, yeah, I hope it does. I hope it's a model that can spread. Obviously, it takes a lot of time that's something I didn't realize beforehand in terms of getting approval With the topic like public health education, especially for sixth grade students, a lot of or not a lot, but we have to make sure that we're being ethical, we're being considerate of each kid's needs. So getting parent permission is something that we have to do. I hope it is something that can spread. Hopefully in the future, after you know, seeing how this pilot year goes and getting information, feedback from students and teachers, we can try to approach more schools and more counties to see if they would be interested in piloting this course for them, for their schools as well.

Speaker 2:

They would be interested in piloting this course for them, for their schools as well? Yeah, definitely I. You know, looking back in my elementary and then in high school years, I think something like this would have been really cool and very helpful for a lot of the people. One thing that caught our attention on your website as well is that we noticed you were partnered with the Community Health Literacy Project. Can you tell us more about your work with them and why you find them important?

Speaker 1:

Sure, sure, yeah. So the Community Health Literacy Project is an established organization that's been working on a similar problem, but they're focusing more on adults rather than children, and, specifically, they make health fact sheets to help simplify complicated health information and jargon for the common person, and so I reached out to them to see if some of our members of Health for Us could help with their work. So right now, what we're working on is we have a couple of people who are creating their own health fact sheets in this partnership. It's still in its early stages, but I think it's a pretty cool project and we're looking forward to potentially expanding this in the future.

Speaker 2:

Moving on as well to other programs you have you told us about when you reached out to us. One of your programs was conducting study, a study to find religious reasons for vaccine hesitancy among certain, particularly like Muslim populations in Northern Virginia. Could you tell me? About what this looks like and what the?

Speaker 1:

rationale behind this study was so this is something that I'm working on. It's not really a part of health for us. This is something I'm working on. So I'm a Muslim. One of my interests has always been, like Muslim health needs. In the Northern Virginia area specifically, the Muslim community is very diverse. In the Northern Virginia area specifically, the Muslim community is very diverse. There's people from all over countries in Africa, countries in South Asia, in the Middle East, and there's a huge refugee population here as well.

Speaker 1:

And obviously, when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a lot of misinformation going around, right, and I found that these populations were especially susceptible to misinformation regarding the pandemic, and so this study was kind of to find and just like find where are these communities getting their health information from and what they would like to see in the case of a future pandemic? Right, would you like to see more information? Or like health information from and what they would like to see in the case of a future pandemic? Right, would you like to see more information, like health information coming from you know, your religious center, your mosque? Would you like to see more health information coming from, like the imam or the religious leaders in the communities During the COVID-19 pandemic. Were you getting most of your information from like WhatsApp or Facebook, that sort of stuff? So that's kind of like one of the aspects of the study.

Speaker 1:

Another was during the COVID-19 vaccine. This is something that isn't really known but there was a lot of hesitancy about getting like the vaccine itself because of potential like religious causes. Right, the concept of halal is the COVID-19 vaccine halal or is it haram? That was a concern for many people and I kind of wanted to like quantify it Like is this like you know how prevalent was this concern? Was it a potential reason for not getting the vaccine? If you know, the vaccine was deemed halalal by a religious leader. Would that change your opinion? That's kind of like where I was hoping to do. It's still in uh, being conducted. This isn't through in like a university or any irb or stuff like that. It's just me trying to go to different mosques get the survey. But yeah, it's a bit separate from health for us, but it still has to do with the concept of, I believe, like health literacy and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's again a very important project as well. Yeah, you've told us a lot about a very diverse amount of projects, from books to classes. One thing that we wanted to know, if you wouldn't mind me asking, is how exactly do you quantify your success or, in outreach, a sort of pre and post study to see you know what people absorb from all of this? Can you tell us a little bit more about how you can figure out if this is reaching people and, if not, how you might fix this in the future?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. That's something that I'm working on. I think that as a youth organization, it's a bit. It's very important that we are able to, like you know, quantifiably like measure our impact and make sure that we're having some sort of impact in our community and we're making a difference. So, as I said, like the pre and post surveys, at least for the public health course, that's our main mode for getting, like feedback regarding what works, what should be fixed, what do you like and, especially, as I said, as we're moving to reach out to new schools, getting this information and showing that we've had a pilot year. That's something that's very important.

Speaker 1:

With the app, I would say I've been sending it out to a lot of different, like free clinics and seeing if they would have any advice. A lot of them have said so. One of one of one specific advice that we have gotten is that a lot of the clinics that we have in our app currently are only members of, like, the VA FCC. There are a lot of clinics in Virginia that aren't members, that we haven't included, for example, clinics in Virginia that aren't members that we haven't included, for example, and so that's something that we have to work towards right being more, I guess, like being more inclusive of the clinics that aren't that we don't know of, and that's.

Speaker 1:

I mean, it's a hard, hard thing to do, but that's one of the, I guess, the suggestions that we've gotten based on me just sending this app to different people. I hope that in the future we can, as we addressed earlier, work with professional organizations that are also in this field and we can kind of piggyback based on their work and also get true feedback about what we can improve on. But this is something that I think takes some time. We're a relatively new organization, so hopefully in the future we can improve on, but this is something that I think takes some time. We're relatively like new organization, so hopefully in the future we can just do better at like measuring our impact.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, no, I mean absolutely no. No, I have no reason. I don't think anyone has any reason to disparage you. You are all doing a great job. And what you told me, I hope this operation keeps getting larger. I guess on that note as well. Um, I'd like to ask, uh, what your future intentions are if, in terms of continuing with public health, do you see yourself moving more into the public health, or maybe the medical side, or where can you? Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Speaker 1:

myself for, like the organization, organization or both, a bit of both really. You kind Myself, or like the organization or both.

Speaker 2:

A bit of both really, you kind of told me where the organization's going, but I'd like to you know, for our audience to know a little bit more about you as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, sure. So I hope to stay in the health and medical field as a whole, hopefully so. Another thing I do is I write a decent bit about like topics in health and medicine, as I mentioned earlier, like the difference between health literacy versus healthcare literacy. I recently published an article about that. That's an area like writing about topics in health and medicine is something that I'm interested in, and so that idea of being like a physician writer that's kind of like the career path that I hope to go down. I hope to be practicing medicine Specifically.

Speaker 1:

One of my main interests right now is in preventive medicine. So obviously, health literacy building health literacy has a lot to do with, like preventing diseases. On the side, I also do a lot. I do research at NIH right now and one of our areas is in preventive neurology. You know ways to prevent Alzheimer's in individuals who have like a genetic risk factor. So that's kind of what I hope to do in the future, but obviously that's I'm in high school right now, so that's a long way, long path to go. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you so much, and if you could tell us a little bit you've kind of alluded to this, but where do you hope to see health for us in a few years?

Speaker 1:

So right now, I think what I'm really hoping to do and I'm working to do is expanding our reach. This means kind of like being able to print and donate our books in larger quantities, as I said earlier. Expanding our course to different schools right, getting the course vetted by like professionals and researchers. I'm also speaking at a couple of different conferences later in the year, most notably like the World Literacy Summit in early 2025. So I hope that continuing to get the word out there about health, literacy and youth and health for us as an organization can really open doors and, I guess, foster collaborations. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much. You know one thing that if you've listened to our podcast, you'll know we always like to close out by asking you know, if there's one thing in your field that you'd like people to know, what would it be? So for our audience? If there's one thing that you'd like our listeners to know about health literacy and what their role in it might be, what do you think it is?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great question. If there's one thing that I want people to know about health literacy, it's that it empowers you to take control of your own health. By being able to understand how to access and interpret and apply, apply health information, you are like able to make more informed decisions that can help prevent diseases and then, you know, improve your well-being and navigate like the complicated, like us, healthcare system with with more confidence and like this is a common misconception. Health literacy isn't just about like reading medical terms. It's about like knowing when to ask the right questions, making choices that can positively impact like your long-term health, and it's a skill that everyone, I think, should have, as it directly relates and kind of influences how we're able to improve our quality of life.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Well, that sounds great. Thank you so much, Rehan, for being on our show today. We really appreciate you reaching out and we wish you the best of luck as you continue as you get closer to your university years.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, thank you.

Speaker 3:

I appreciate it. Health Voices is produced by Frederic Guzzi and I Fareed Salman, with support from the entire PHC board. If you have questions about the podcast or me featured in an episode, please email us at healthvoicespodcast at gmailcom or DM us at our Instagram, healthvoicespod. And if you enjoyed the episode, don't forget to leave us a review on Spotify, youtube or Apple Podcasts. Thanks again for listening.