Funded Projects

El Otro Elefante

Project Year

2024

City & State

Miami, Florida

Program Name

CATCH Resident

Topic

Parenting/Parent Education

Program Description

Problem:  Approximately 54% of Miami residents are foreign-born and around 67% of the population of Miami speaks Spanish. Migrants experience multiple difficulties, including socio-economic instability, health illiteracy and lack of healthcare access. The latter increases the risk of developing preventable conditions, decreases early diagnosis of potentially mortal diseases and increases the risk of preventable mortality causes.  During pregnancy and early childhood, parents' interest in seeking pediatric information increases.  Nowadays, with internet access, the main source of information has been shifting from in person healthcare professionals to online information and it continues to increase as shown by Kubb C. in a meta analysis which demonstrated that online health information seeking by parents ranges from 52 to 93%.  Meanwhile, a study from Bryan M et al. showed that  68% of parents used social media for health information and that they “sometimes have problems distinguishing between trusted and untrusted websites and wished for more guidance from their physicians but state that they rarely discussed their findings with them”.       Primary Setting: The initial videos and recordings will be shown on the Uhealth Pediatric Mobile Clinic  that  provide direct primary medical care for over 4,000 children in Miami. Also, they will be shared on additional channels such as radio( through El Planeta Media), and online through Instagram, TikTok  and Youtube accounts of “El Otro Elefante”. Number of children affected:  In Florida by 2020,  there were 259,931 latino children. The Uhealth Pediatric Mobile Clinic serves around 4,000 children, 85% of them being primarily Spanish speakers.  Project goal:  Increase access to accurate, up to date, evidence based medical information provided by healthcare professionals in Spanish for Hispanic parents through The Uhealth Pediatric Mobile Clinic, radio, social media and podcast.                     Proposed intervention:  Develop a multichannel platform that shares healthcare information adapted to latinos, in simple terms. A topic will be chosen every 2 weeks. This topic will be broadcasted on a 25 to 45 minutes podcast where a medical Spanish speaker expert, along with an influencer, that aligns with our medical expert, will answer questions proposed by parents about a specific topic to disassemble the myths around children's healthcare. A summary of it will also be  shown on the Mobile Clinic, where parents are expected to watch the information while waiting to be seen by the doctor. Also, these videos will be posted on Instagram and Tiktok, along with an informative campaign. Anticipated outcomes: We hope that these communication channels help increase healthcare knowledge in hispanic parents in Miami. We strongly believe that by increasing healthcare literacy we will reduce risk of harm in children. 

Project Goal

We want to provide guidance for Hispanic caregivers from the Pediatric Mobile Clinic in Miami, as well as other parents that live in the area that serves in order to increase access to accurate, up to date, medical information provided by healthcare professionals.  

Project Objective 1

To create 24 episodes in the format of podcast to be broadcasted by June 2025 

Project Objective 2

To grow a community of 20K followers in social media and podcast listeners composed of parents from the communities near the clinic, thanks to geomarketing technology 

Project Objective 3

Bring together a group of 20 medical experts who volunteer their knowledge to help Hispanic parents through our channels to generate content that covers the following 24 topics crucial for children's health: 24 podcast episodes and 24 social media campaigns in 12 months from June 2024 to June 2025

AAP District

District X

Institutional Name

Uhealth Mobile Clinic

Contact 1

Maura Alvarez Baumgartner, MD, MPH