How a non -profit organization in health has taken the hip of the hip and found its secret sauce

Hip hop as a musical genre lasted five decades and counted. His message went from the descriptions of the granular realities of urban life to the way Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five described them in 1982 “The Message” of 1982. And he came until the declarations of the Glorinla power famous in the “Hol” of 2024 on “. But hip hop can do much more for Dr Olajide Williams, a stroke neurologist in practice at the Columbia Irving Medical Center. It is therefore put on a mission to link culture, people and its vocation: health.

In 2006, he joined the legendary rapper Doug E. Fresh to Found Hip Hop Public Health, a non-profit organization that promotes messages of health education by cultivation of hip-hop and interacts with the community, meeting them where they are.

Now, Dr. Williams says that his group has extended his message to 42 cities and set his goal on mental health space and continued to propagate learning on cerebral accidents, diabetes and heart disease, all the main killers of people who live in urban areas.

He gave an example of how hip hop resonating with children has helped improve results with patients with stroke, who had only a short window to recognize the symptoms and obtain the necessary treatment.

“If three hours had detached, we could no longer give them coillotic drugs. And, at the time, we had less than 2% of our patients who had strokes in this three -hour window in Harlem.

“We have tested the effectiveness of the use of children as well as what we call proximal targets,” he continued. “We ensure that children are literate and allow them the skills necessary to effectively communicate this information to their parents and grandparents. These are the people who are in danger for stroke. And we found that these children are incredibly intelligent.

Dr. Williams said Harlem had had a quadrupling of treatment rates, from less than two percent to more than eight percent.

“And the magic, the secret sauce, was not so secret, but it was hip hop,” said Dr. Williams. “Hip-hop could teach. To engage these children and their families. Capacity of hip-hop, capacity of hip hop to strengthen confidence and self-esteem in children who will allow them to effectively communicate this information. ”

Before that time, hip hop had not been used in a way that supported and favored health care so that children strengthen for the symptoms of a disease as a stroke to save lives. The project that Williams and Fresh began called “Trad Ain’t No Joke” and presented animated characters learning the symptoms of a stroke while dancing to a hip-hop beat struck with Fresh’s words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

“Many people do not realize that music occupies twice as much real estate in our brain as the language itself. You know, music is a powerful tool for learning,” said Dr. Williams. “We therefore mainly came across this incredible capacity for music to save the lives of stroke victims in Harlem. And then we decided that we were going to take the model and build an entire organization around the model and use it in several areas of disease from obesity, through heart disease, by dementia. ”

The success of the use of children to communicate the warning signs of AVC has led to other collaborations with artists like Daryl McDaniels of Run-DMC, Chuck D of Public Enemy, P and others. Although these artists resonate with adults of average age and the elderly who remember them from their youth, the public health of hip hop is always open to working with more contemporary artists, said Williams. A song, “Ur What U Eat”, presented the work with Travis Barker by Blink 186, Matisyahu and Ariana Grande.

Another “Veggie Luv” had Monifah and J-Rome. Others, including Ashanti and Jordin Sparks, joined them on the album “Songs for a Health Plus America”.

Tony Drootin, co-founder of the We Are All Music Foundation and Sound On Sound Studios in Montclair, NJ, was seated in the board of directors of Hip Hop Public Health and understands the growth that the non-profit association has experienced because of the way in which he designed his message.

“It is really an incredible concept of what they are doing, which does research with everything, prevention of strokes, weight loss for the consumption of sugary drinks and the writing of lyric words and content that portrays their messaging, which is health literacy in various fields,” said Drorotin, whose organization grants funds to groups like the public health of hip hop.

“It is a different method to send the message to children, and it uses hip hop, to whom they can identify. They have proof of efficiency in research which showed that the children retained what they heard and learned. ”

It has been proven that the concept of meeting people where they are with a trustworthy voice has been working for years, according to Pamela Garmon Johnson, a senior national vice-president of Healthy Living & Nextgen programs at the American Heart Association. She says it is one of the guidelines for her organization.

“There has been research on the use of different musical methods to provide information,” said Johnson. “We have to assess how people want to receive information. So we have to find out how to pack our information so that not only can it be delivered but that measures are taken.

If individuals say that we receive information, it is the responsibility of organizations to determine how from the point of view of health literacy to deliver it so that the communities take measures. »»

The way the public health of hip-hop will approach its message to its target audience while a new administration takes over at the White House will remain constant, said Dr. Williams. The non-profit organization has published specific messages on vaccination during the COVVI-19 pandemic with a series of literacy produced in English and Spanish which collected nearly a billion impressions on social networks.

“For us, politics does not play a role,” said Williams. “We are here, whatever the administration, to continue to promote our scientific belief, our science and our health for young people, in particular those who are disproportionately affected by these conditions.

“Health, for us, is not political,” he continued. “Whether you are a republican or democratic or independent, you can be comfortable, you can be struck by diseases. As a doctor, I was formed to prioritize life, not the political band. And it is the same vision that we bring to Hip Hop public health at the table.”