ASK for Your Life Campaign Launches GoFundMe Appeal to Support Patient Safety Education in African-American Communities

WANTAGH, N.Y., March 15, 2018 (Newswire.com) - ​The ASK for Your Life Campaign, a program of Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy’s Healthcare Equality Project, has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support its continuing campaign of patient safety education for African-Americans.

The donation site is at https://www.gofundme.com/ask-for-your-life-campaign. If reached, its modest initial goal of $5000 will mean that ASK educators such as community organizer Oscar Bruce, Jr. (pictured giving a TEDx talk on the subject) can continue to facilitate educational and interactive workshops in the black community, with the goal of empowering participants to partner with their healthcare provider.

Patients can often tell that something's not right.

Dr. Leslie Farrington, Co-chair, ASK for Your Life Campaign

Racism is a factor

“Education means talking about disparities in health outcomes and life expectancy between African-Americans and other Americans,” says campaign co-founder Dr. Leslie Farrington. “We discuss how unequal treatment affects the care of minorities regardless of socioeconomic level, insurance status or medical risk factors. Racism is a factor that affects health and healthcare in many ways.”

Farrington notes, “Most health professionals have the best intentions and often don’t realize their behavior and decisions may be influenced by commonly held stereotypes, time pressure, fatigue or stress. Patients can often tell that something’s not right. That’s where the interactive role-play, telling stories, and sharing solutions by workshop participants come in. A variety of medical scenarios are presented so that proven patient safety and health literacy communication techniques can be practiced by the group. The more interactive the session, the more the group’s members are empowered to ask questions and speak up if something’s not right.”

Respect and Trust

The techniques practiced in ASK For Your Life Workshops are similar to those taught in Pulse CPSEA’s other patient safety programs, but with an emphasis on building a relationship of mutual respect and trust in which the patient and the clinician see each other as individuals and become partners in the care.

Community organizer Oscar Bruce says, “People — both patients and families — are often insecure and intimidated in medical situations. An important part of this training is to encourage people to ask questions if something is bothering them.” “Partner in your health care,” he advises. “Share thoughts with them. Talk with them. Don’t let decisions be made that confuse and trouble you.”

Donations to the GoFundMe appeal of any amount no matter how small, are greatly appreciated and will contribute to improved health care for African-Americans.

For more information, please call (516) 579-4711.

Source: Pulse Center for Patient Safety Education & Advocacy