Matthew McCurdy, MPH is the co-founder and president of BLKHLTH, an organization focused on elevating the conversation about how racism impacts health outcomes for Black people.
 

Kaakpema (KP) Yelpaala, MPH is the co-founder and CEO of InOn Health, which uses consumer insights and behavioral science to connect multicultural populations with trusted health information and services.

Here, they share how digital technologies can be leveraged to support the health, well-being, and early screening needs of Black men in the U.S. and Africa.

In Full Health (IFH): What inspired you to found an organization focused on health communication and health outcomes? What challenges or obstacles were you observing — or facing yourself?

Matthew McCurdy: The summer after graduation from undergrad, I worked at a boy’s home with transient youth who were serving time for minor offenses for truancy or petty theft or things like that. This experience was where I found my outcomes of interest: Health and well-being.

I realized that these kids were really suffering at no fault of their own, and ultimately sometimes at no fault of their parents. I wanted to know how we could build a better society to support the future. That’s really where my initial interest in public health came about.

We started BLKHLTH because of our frustration with how the relationship between racism and health outcomes was discussed in public health. We could see the impacts of structural racism on the social drivers of health in our communities, but everyone was talking about race as the exposure. We desire to examine how racism impacts health outcomes and then build tools and programs to do something about it.

Kaakpema (KP) Yelpaala: At InOn Health, our work is at the intersection of consumer insights and health communications, with an emphasis on multicultural populations and mobile messaging. We observed that if you’re thinking about gaps in care, and how people consume information, for our multicultural populations and people of color, texting is really the best way to reach them. A lot of people are not reached because health care is not connecting with them in the way that they typically communicate.

You won’t find these populations on the patient portal. Furthermore, we spend a lot of money mailing paper to these folks, but they’re all texting. InOn Health wants to know how we can really personalize communication in a way that’s culturally sensitive for a wider range of diverse populations in the U.S. that are getting missed so that they can get the care they need.

IFH: KP, you recently shared your very personal journey with prostate cancer — how has this experience impacted your work at InOn Health, specifically as it relates to Black men and prostate cancer?

KP Yelpaala: My diagnosis made it even clearer to me why this work of connecting multicultural Black and brown populations to care is so important. I am trained in public health. I have a lot of access to information and, frankly, privilege in health care. And even then I was almost missed on screening.

The screening standard suggested that I be screened maybe 10 years from now — but also the data shows that Black men are two times more likely to die from prostate cancer than white men. I actually was very lucky that I had a primary care physician who decided to screen me early, on a whim. A big part of this story is access to information. We need more Black and brown folks to understand why they need to be screened and why they need to advocate for their own health when the health system doesn’t proactively engage them.

The best way to get that kind of information to them is through trusted communication channels because frankly, I was lucky. I have access to a lot of things to support my healthcare journey. So if it’s like this for me, I just think about everyone else out there that doesn’t have the same access that I did.

Expressing Gratitude

For myself, I want to send a shout-out to my friends and family that were supportive during my prostate cancer journey this year. For InOn Health, I want to share our thanks and appreciation for Startup Health. They are an incredible strategic partner and community.

Kaakpema (KP) Yelpaala, MPH
Co-founder and CEO, InOn Health

IFH: Matthew, BLKHLTH has partnered with Cottonelle for the #GoodDownThere initiative which connects Black communities with education and screenings for colorectal cancer. How do you hope this partnership can make a difference — and why is it needed?

Matthew McCurdy: Death from colorectal cancer can be prevented. Black people are diagnosed at later stages when their cancer is already advanced. That can be prevented just through screenings.

We’ve really been fortunate to partner with Cottonelle, and our goal is simple: To prevent death from colorectal cancer. If we can screen folks early enough, we can find polyps that haven’t yet turned into cancers. We’re really hopeful that we can prevent people from receiving a cancer diagnosis and from dying from colorectal cancer.

When it comes to cancer, it’s a scary topic to talk about. Colorectal cancer can be especially taboo to discuss. We’re working to lighten that conversation by providing health education in a compassionate and culturally responsive way.

Beyond this, those resources then have to be followed with an action that people can actually take. It has been so cool to see Cottenelle as a brand step up in a programmatic way. In addition to just raising awareness, we’re connecting people to the screening tools they need.

IFH: Both of your organizations also have ties to work being done in Africa. How does this global perspective inform your work here, and why are these connections so vital?

Matthew McCurdy: When I think about, particularly, South Africa, there are a lot of similarities to the experiences of Black people in the Southern U.S. Not to say that apartheid and slavery were similar, but the sort of disenfranchisement, the restriction of resources, and reallocation of the benefits of labor to someone else — I see a lot of similarities in sort of how those societies have organized themselves.

In Africa, as in America, we notice a lack of resources and a lack of true culturally responsive health information. Particularly through our partnerships in Johannesburg, we’ve really thought about how can we elevate the history that’s happened in that country and work with people on the ground there. We by no means are experts, so we’re elevating the voice of Black people in that country and working with them to develop programs, training, and resources that really speak to their experience.

Community Connections

Monica Ponder

Dr. Monica Ponder has been a mentor for me and a few members of BLKHLTH for a while. Her deep love for Black people has helped frame my personal goals for how I interact with our community. Her critical lens on how health communication — particularly for Black people — can be impactful has really shaped some of our work.

Matthew McCurdy, MPH
Co-founder and President, BLKHLTH

KP Yelpaala: The first thing you’ll recognize working in Sub-Saharan Africa, is that any African country alone is very culturally diverse, often with many different languages spoken. The average view of Sub-Saharan Africa is that it’s all one place and all one people. In reality, you have many different cultures within even one country. As well, there is both an urban sprawl and rural geographies to be considered in scaling any innovation.

To connect with patients in African countries, you have to consider cultural diversity. You don’t have a choice. There are so many things that are similar between the U.S. and Africa. You start to think, “If we look at African countries or other emerging market settings, there are lots of lessons that can be learned about how to bridge the access gap.” We took the lessons we learned about multicultural communication in African countries and applied them to our work here.