Empowering Black Youth Through Public Health Education and Technology
A conversation with Antwan Matthews about our Empowering Black Youth program.
About Antwan Matthews:
Antwan Matthews
Antwan Matthews is a nationally recognized public health researcher and advocate, specializing in sexual and reproductive health. He is passionate about advocating for and increasing awareness of public health issues amongst the Black community.
In 2017 he was awarded the Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship and spoke in front of former American President Bill Clinton at the National AIDS Memorial Grove for the World AIDS Day Event. He is also a SHARP Scholar, Youth Champion Fellow, and has presented his research at the AIDS 2020/COVID-19 Conference. Matthews is currently a LINCS Navigator at San Francisco Department of Public Health. He has also worked as an HIV Navigator and Phlebotomist for GLIDE’s Harm Reduction division.
About the Empowering Black Youth Project:
Code Tenderloin is partnering with Antwan Matthews and the NAACP to recruit and guide ten Black youth through a seven month paid internship, where they’ll work on promoting sexual health education for Black youth. The project will culminate in our participants creating a website and “public health toolkit” on an online platform, that will educate and inform Black Youth on topics like: sexual health best practices, STD prevention, and how to have healthy conversations with sexual partners.
This project will involve the innovative combination of sexual/reproductive health education and technology to convey information more effectively to Black and Brown communities, enabling them to better access healthcare and decrease sexually transmitted infections in San Francisco.
Antwan, you’ve been nationally recognized for your extensive experience in public health research and advocacy work. What led you to this field?
I’ve always been interested in healthcare. My father’s construction company remodelled hospitals and my mother worked in healthcare, so I’ve been around healthcare environments from a young age. During undergrad at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, I studied biology to learn more about the science behind it and originally wanted to be a dentist. However, personal experiences such as losing grandparents to illnesses and having my own HIV status go from negative to positive made me change my focus. I became more interested in learning about the first hand effects of things like nutrition and medication on the body and its functioning. The combination of studying biology and seeing personal effects of health knowledge pivoted my focus to health education, so I could use my scientific knowledge to inform others about their health and what affects it.
At Tougaloo College, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), I started the Peer Health Educators student health organization. Our goal was to work with Black students and give them quantitative and qualitative skills to access healthcare, with a special focus on combating and preventing diseases such as Hepatitis C, STIs, and HIV. I started this organization because I realized there was really poor exposure to health education at my college and throughout Mississippi’s public education systems. Both content and communication were lacking, and my group worked especially hard on delivering health education in ways that engaged students and our community. We did things like teaching through games rather than seminars, switching up the health topic we taught each month, and collaborating on events with Greek life. We also engaged students through projects such as blood drives, Down syndrome walks, breast cancer awareness events, etc. Through this group I received great exposure to many different healthcare systems and learned a lot about how Black students perceive healthcare.
During undergrad, I also studied at Brown University through a domestic partnership program. At Brown my studies focused on immunology, surgery, public health, and non-profit work. I became exposed to more systematic aspects of public health through my education and internships. Overall, my scope was much wider than in Mississippi. I gradually became a voice and advocate for the Black community rather than just a spectator of the system. From there, I became really ambitious to build systems for Black and Brown people and work with Black and Brown people to do so, rather than relying on systems externally to engage and provide services to our communities.
What experiences and observations lead you to start this particular project?
In 2017, I received the Pedro Zamora Young Leaders Scholarship from the National AIDS Memorial. This paid for my last year of school, and I was invited to San Francisco to speak in front of Bill Clinton. I became interested in learning about San Francisco’s iconic social justice movements and public health institutions.
I realized I wanted to work with the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) to help facilitate more change. The opportunity to work with such a large institution was crucial to being able to make large-scale impact and reaching as many people as possible. As I was working with SFDPH and in healthcare, I noticed that there could be improvements in how the Black community, especially Black youth, were getting informed on health issues and healthcare. This became even more apparent after COVID struck; the gaps in health education and more limited access to healthcare in communities of color became more dire. I really wanted to help SFDPH better serve San Francisco’s Black and Brown communities and began thinking about ways to do so. The opportunity to apply for a grant came up during COVID, and it was the perfect opportunity to create a platform that would improve health education for Black youth in San Francisco.
On top of the health education inadequacies I wanted to address, another motivator to do this project is that San Francisco is the perfect place to merge public health and tech. I think the spirit of innovation and progressive platforms here is a great setting to try out a model for public health education that could potentially be replicated nationally. For the youth participants, this is a great opportunity to help them develop professional and technical skills, and this city offers lots of tech careers where they could apply those skills.
What would you say are the greatest barriers to better health education for youth in San Francisco, particularly Black youth?
Unfortunately there’s a lot of natural barriers, such as income and geographic disparities between communities of color and the rest of San Francisco. For example, Bayview and other neighborhoods where more Black communities live are far from the central, more affluent areas of San Francisco where the advanced healthcare systems are located. Bad public transportation for these communities makes healthcare even harder to access. There’s also mistrust towards the healthcare system stemming from historical medical mistreatment of Black and Brown communities. San Francisco boasts about progressive health and advanced institutions, such as UCSF and the San Francisco General Hospital, but Black people aren’t able to access these resources and don’t reap the same benefits as the rest of San Francisco.
I’d say education is another big issue, one that especially affects youth. Many Black students don’t go to private or charter schools, which is common for the children of richer San Francisco residents. Sexual health education is notably worse in public schools, so a large proportion of Black youth just aren't getting informed and being taught in a way for them to retain the information to create healthier sex practices. Additionally, I’ve noticed that San Francisco’s public health education doesn’t resonate very well with Black communities. I think their marketing can sometimes reinforce beliefs that HIV only affects some groups of people, which makes Black youth feel like they don’t need to care or pay attention. On top of all this, in many Black communities generational health education disparities are passed down. I’ve commonly seen parents being naïve or lacking awareness about their children’s sex lives. They lack the right methods of communication to advise youth how to protect themselves, and if their status changes what one should do to remain healthy.
Why collaborate with Code Tenderloin on this project?
I used to work at Glide, a non-profit that serves the Tenderloin neighborhood. They have cultural training for their new hires, and during that I went on one of Del Seymour’s iconic Tenderloin walking tours. I thought he was inspiring and learned about Code Tenderloin, the non-profit that he founded and runs. I had wanted to work with a Black-led, community-run organization while applying for the Ending The Epidemic grant, which is an initiative for San Francisco to decrease all STIs in the county of San Francisco by 2030. So, Code Tenderloin was a great fit!
I really liked that Code Tenderloin was serving the community in many ways, helping provide both basic physical needs and more long-term support through workforce development and technical education programs. Code Tenderloin is also a pretty new non-profit that’s open to new ideas and growing out their platforms. I’ve really appreciated how open Donna (Code Tenderloin’s Executive Director) and Del have been throughout the grant application process and in discussing the vision for this project. Code Tenderloin has shown me that they’re an organization that’s accepting of new ideas and allowing Black upcoming researchers to develop projects and uplift the community they serve, which is really important to me.
I know the project is still in its early stages currently, but could you go over what’s been done so far? We’d also love to hear about the overall plan for the project.
This program is split into two phases: one that’s happening right now and one that’ll happen in the summer after we merge with the Opportunities for All (OFA) summer program, which is partly hosted by Code Tenderloin.
Currently students are learning about many interdisciplinary aspects of public and sexual health. Things like the medical history of it, how it ties into the exploitation of Black and Brown communities, and recent scientific advancements in the field. We’re focusing on giving them a rich and nuanced knowledge base that they can utilize, along with the history of public health specifically in San Francisco. Our youth are also building a “public health toolkit”, which will include brochures, condom designs, and other marketing materials. Our goal is to guide them in using their creativity and firsthand experiences to create public health education materials that are effective and engaging to Black youth communities.
A lot of this learning will hopefully allow participants to become role models in their communities for other Black youth. They’re acquiring the skills needed to become strong sources of health information and advocates for public health.
As we move into summer, our program will gradually merge into the OFA youth program. Through the technical education from merging with OFA, our students will build out a website and virtual platform about public and sexual health. This platform will host materials from their “public health toolkit”, and we’re discussing the details of how to release this website currently.
That’s great! How do you envision the ultimate impact of this project?
The overall impact of this project will be the creation of a new system for public health to reach communities through a public health and tech module. Our youth participants have the most crucial role of bridging the gap between health education and the community, as historically public health education hasn’t resonated with or interested Black and Brown communities.
A system like this will showcase what Black youth are capable of when they’re given the right resources. It’ll also demonstrate the effectiveness of merging creativity and ideas from youth, technological innovation, community-led programs, and public health. I’m really hoping this will prove the need for Black leadership and input in large institutions, such as departments of public health, as well as show the value of supporting Black voices. I’d like this project to be an example to the San Francisco Department of Public Health that more black leadership is needed to reach all communities in San Francisco.
Ideally, our participants will become lifelong public health advocates in whatever communities they become a part of. Hopefully they’ll feel empowered to start public health projects and or organizations in their futures.
We can’t wait to see the results and impact from this project. We’ll definitely keep everyone updated through Code Tenderloin’s social media and other platforms. Also keep an eye on Opportunities for All’s website for updates on other projects from San Francisco youth.