![]() ![]() When necessary, Hip Hop Public Health works to update its content. "So it's really comprehensive," says Benson, "so that educators can help integrate this into health education in schools and after-school programs, museums, libraries - anywhere that young people are served." "And we've created an acronym that helps recognize those symptoms of dementia."īenson says her team then works with school districts and community-based organizations to get these materials into the heads and hands of K-12 students across the country. "We are currently in the process of concluding a randomized controlled trial look at dementia awareness in communities of color, specifically trying to destigmatize dementia," says Williams. The organization has created more than 200 resources to date ranging from music videos to lesson plans to educator toolkits on topics including nutrition, mental health, physical activity, dementia, oral health, vaccine literacy, and disease prevention. "Stroke Ain't No Joke" was the first in what would become a series of hip-hop tracks using the musical genre "to build health literacy and ultimately support behavior change," says Lori Rose Benson, the CEO and executive director of Hip Hop Public Health. "If hip-hop could tell people how to dress, what to drive, what to smoke, what to drink and how to act," says DMC, "why couldn't hip hop tell people how to live?" Stoked by 'Stroke Ain't No Joke' ![]() And artists like DMC were eager to be a part of what Williams was building. It was these constructive elements "of social activism, of social justice, of lifting people up" that Williams sought to leverage, particularly within communities of color and underserved populations. He took his mic, sprung to his feet, and launched into the alphabet song, concluding with, "Now you know your ABC's!" Reacting to the applause, he shouted, "You know what I'm saying!?" At the Skoll World Forum, DMC, egged on by Williams sitting beside him, bet that everyone in the audience had learned something fundamental through "one of the greatest hip-hop songs in the history" - the singsong ABC song. Everything about hip-hop uniquely has a way to inspire people into transformation." There's something universal about hip-hop, says DMC, who serves on the advisory council of Hip Hop Public Health: "Old, young, white, Black, even if you don't understand English, you can relate to the feeling of it. Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, a hip-hop pioneer formerly in the seminal group Run-DMC, says "it speaks in a youthful, fun, understandable way" while packing the intensity of punk rock or rock and roll. The team at Hip Hop Public Health says that hip-hop offers something extra when it comes to the information they're trying to relay. "Music has powerful neurological effects on our brains," says Williams. For patients with a stroke, we use melodic intonation therapy to help them to speak," which refers to hitching spoken words and phrases to different pitches and rhythmic patterns to restore speech. "We use it for agitated patients with delirium - we use music to calm them down instead of using restraints. "Music helps us to learn, music augments our memories, music lowers our stress," he explains. Williams, now a neurologist at Columbia University, says that music has a role to play in medicine generally. In this anniversary year, Skoll wanted to call attention to this lesser known part of hip-hop history - which continues to thrive in 2023 with new rhymes and expanded programming for young people. "There was a lot of skepticism about whether this type of work could lead to a fruitful, productive" career, he admits.Ī year later, the organization Hip Hop Public Health was born, co-founded by Williams and Fresh. Williams wanted to demonstrate that hip-hop could be used for public health interventions. Their goal was to create a hit but with an unusual lyrical premise - to teach people how to detect stroke symptoms and respond appropriately. "We would be going over different beats, different sounds." "I would be with Doug for hours and hours into the wee hours of the morning," Williams recalls. Each evening, he'd finish up his work as a physician at Harlem Hospital Center and walk seven blocks to the studio of hip-hop artist and "The Original Human Beat Box" Doug E. Olajide Williams felt like he had two jobs. During this rap, McDaniels called out: "I'm not afraid of the dark anymore/because I am the light./I'll be there at the start of the war/Because I am the fight." Mind perform at the Skoll World Forum 2023. They're hip-hop artists who weave public-health messages into their rhymes: From left: Sister Fa, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and Ali A.K.A. ![]()
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