Improving Community Health through Data Literacy

In July 2021, Dr. Margaret Handley and partners from San Francisco State University (SFSU) and Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA) received a grant to introduce bilingual data literacy and data visualization education into Bay Area English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Dr. Handley and colleagues, Dr. Maricel Santos (SFSU) and Maria Jose Bastías (MUA), used grant funding to engage women from indigenous backgrounds in ESL classes and to support the creation of a new Communicative Justice Leadership Program that:

• Combines ESL language lessons with data literacy, public speaking and health coaching skills.
• Developed an online toolkit with teaching resources to help community programs that work with leaders from historically excluded language groups.
• Creates a Bay Area Task Force to help expand and connect these efforts with community health worker programs.

The project, funded by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, builds on over 12 years of work by Dr. Handley and her colleagues to help adult ESL learners become “expert interpreters”—helping to turn complex health information into something that their own communities can relate to and understand.