Speaking broadly about his pioneering work aimed at advancing equity in global healthcare systems and settings, SC&I Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Charles Senteio presented the lecture “Opportunities for Health Communication in the Digital Age to Influence Policy,” to the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) during his recent visit to the center in Nairobi in Kenya, Africa.

Addressing the ways researchers can leverage their findings to communicate about and impact health policy development in positive and measurable ways, Senteio stressed to the audience, composed of scholars and healthcare professionals, the need to include the use of digital technologies and robust community engagement plans in their work. 

When scientists engage with communities both individually and collectively as part of their research, Senteio said, they can tell effective stories about the people they are studying, and these stories can impact the development of polices that contribute to greater health equity.

“If our work is going to have an impact,” Senteio said, “It must be accessible to the vast majority of the population who don’t speak or think like scientists.”

“If our work is going to have an impact,” Senteio said, “It must be accessible to the vast majority of the population who don’t speak or think like scientists.”

Senteio also stressed to the researchers that while impacting policy should be a goal, it is a challenging one to achieve. “Policy makers as individuals or groups are not solely influenced by the numbers showing empirical data or return on investment,” Senteio said. “The numbers are a part of the story but not the complete story. Health equity is a persistent human rights issue. I have not seen that achieving health equity is always a universal goal. While the visibility of health inequity is not a new phenomenon, we are still miles away from achieving equity. Health equity is not necessarily a health issue – it’s a human rights issue. I ground my work in this fundamental premise.”

Mamadou Diallo, Head of the Policy, Engagement, and Communications (PEC) Program at APHRC, said, “As Africa's leading research center, we intentionally leverage the power of policy engagement and communication to drive evidence-informed decision-making. I was impressed by the ideas Dr. Charles presented on that end. We see possible avenues for collaboration in the future that could explore some of the ideas that Dr. Charles presented, including the use of advanced digital technology in health communication and a community-centered approach to advancing health equity. We are grateful for hosting Dr. Charles and thankful for him- finding time to share his experiences and knowledge.”

Senteio also discussed with the attendees a few of the projects he is currently working on in the health equity research space.

“Drawing on my life experiences and professional roles, my research focuses on people: how they think, how they perceive the world around them, and how those perceptions may influence health behaviors,” Senteio said.

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC)’s  Mercury Project funded Senteio’s study “Combatting inaccurate health information with community-crafted messaging: Developing a scalable community-driven approach in Latin America and the United States.”

The goal of the study, which Senteio is co-leading with David Rand of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is to use innovative methods to design and assess the effectiveness of public health messaging in Brazil and Mexico.

“The power of our project,” Senteio said, “is in using the ‘wisdom of crowds’ — a concept I studied in my information science doctoral training — to work with the targeted populations themselves to create the messages, and then to test them against the messages currently in use which have been created by technical experts who represent government and public health organizations.”

“Drawing on my life experiences and professional roles, my research focuses on people: how they think, how they perceive the world around them, and how those perceptions may influence health behaviors,” Senteio said.

For another current project, Senteio is researching the impact generative AI could have on healthcare outcomes, because of the hidden inequities embedded in the technology that may have already emerged or will emerge from this innovation.

His upcoming project “Advancing Theory Research and Practice in Designing Health Data Dashboards to Better Communicate Complex Information to a Diverse Audience,” will examine public health dashboards that can predict disease outbreaks by continuously monitoring the health status of the community. Senteio, who joined the project launched by SC&I Professor of Communication Itzhak Yanovitzky and team are working to develop a unified theory around how these dashboards can be better developed. 

Senteio is also working on a book with the tentative title “Advancing Health Equity: Perceptions of Racial Discrimination in Health Outcomes for Black Americans.”  The book will explore how perceived discrimination influences health behaviors for Black Americans.

Lamech Mutava, a Multimedia Officer at APHRC, said, “Dr. Charles delivered such an impactful lecture, and we were all grateful to host him. More than 100 staff from the Policy Engagement and Communication Unit and the Health and Wellbeing Unit attended and actively participated in an insightful question-and-answer session. His lecture provided timely and relevant insights for us at APHRC as we continue exploring ways to leverage health communication to influence policy -- and ultimately transform lives through research. As an aspiring development communications researcher, the relevance of the participatory approach he described – ‘involving community members in generating and evaluating messages impact efficacy’ gave me invaluable perspectives on framing messages from a community-based perspective to catalyze social behavior change.” 

Learn more about the Library and Information Science Department at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information on the website.

Photos: Courtesy of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), Nairobi, Kenya, Africa.