Making Health "Music" in Newark
Newark Public Schools
Newark, New Jersey
New telecommunications tools do more than enable us to leap effortlessly across geographic boundaries. They also help strengthen bonds within individual neighborhoods, as residents in the low-income New Community housing development in Newark, New Jersey, have demonstrated.
In 1994, the Newark Public Schools set out to install a computer network to link people who live in New Community with professionals at the nearby University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The school board had grown concerned that unusually large numbers of children from the neighborhood were having trouble in school because they often were sick. Health-care providers, meanwhile, were concerned because census data showed that people from the area surrounding the university medical center were being admitted to the hospital at unusually high rates for services that either would be unnecessary if people received appropriate primary care or could be provided more efficiently in clinics or doctors' offices.
Hoping that a computer network would give people information that would enable them to improve their health, Pamela Morgan, a project coordinator in the Newark Public Schools, helped secure TIIAP funds to install computers at the Newton Street School and in the homes of a group of neighborhood "captains." The school provided computer training and helped maintain the system. Each captain agreed to let members of at least four other families enter their homes to use the computers.
The Neighborhood Information Infrastructure
For software, Morgan turned to Dr. Alan Shaw of MIT's Media Lab, whose "Multi-User Sessions in Community," or MUSIC, system enables participants to go online to share information on community services and activities, send and receive e-mail, participate in live "chat" groups, or engage in sustained discussions through various community forums. Participants also can use the Internet, but Shaw deliberately plays down that capability. "The NII, to us, is more than the National Information Infrastructure," he says. "It is really the Neighborhood Information Infrastructure."
Since launching the project, New Community neighbors have held forums dealing with AIDS, lupus, asthma, and the common cold. People have gone online to ask medical professionals about health concerns. Parents have asked whether sugar really makes kids hyperactive. In one chat group, doctors talked about the importance of exercise for health, and a group of neighbors responded by forming a walking club.Connecting Families and Doctors
Dr. Caryl Heaton, associate professor of clinical family medicine at the university, says the project has made a difference. "Before Making Healthy Music, the street that runs between the medical school and New Community might as well have been a moat," she says. "Now, the community seems more knowledgeable and sophisticated about health."
The community's enthusiasm for the project has, in some cases, outstripped the ability of medical professionals to respond partly because workloads at the university have increased in the face of budget cuts. Cynthia Washington, one of the project captains and president of the Newton Street School's PTA, says some of the most useful suggestions she received for dealing with her son's asthma actually came from her online neighbors.
Washington and other neighborhood residents have used Making Healthy Music for much more than addressing health issues. Women, men, kids, young fathers, and others have all formed discussion groups. One participant started a discussion that led neighbors to plant a community garden. And in another online conversation, community members persuaded the New Community Corporation to build a recreation center so that teenagers can gather without having to leave the neighborhood.
All this has given residents a new sense of opportunity and self-esteem, Heaton and others agree. Washington, who recently went back to school to hone her word-processing skills, says she has been able to increase attendance at PTA meetings. She marvels that she can send an e-mail message to the school principal from her home, and thrills to see her children conducting Internet research for school and participating in online chat groups with their neighbors.
"We thought we would put community people in touch with medical people and each other to explore health issues," says Morgan, "but the project has mushroomed into an all-encompassing community revitalization project."
Pamela Morgan
Project Coordinator
(201) 733-8290
pemorgan@aol.com
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications
Last Modified: 18 Dec 97