Teaching & Research
Dr. Naa-Solo Tettey is a distinguished public health professional with over two decades of expertise in community health education.
Teaching
Dr. Tettey is an Associate Professor of Public Health at William Paterson University. She teaches courses in health behavior theory, health administration, and health disparities.
Research
Dr. Tettey's research focuses on addressing critical aspects of public health and community wellness with a focus on health equity, lifestyle medicine, social media and health, and criminal justice reform. Her main research areas include:
- Reducing Health Disparities and Chronic Illness: By fostering effective partnerships among community members, organizations, healthcare providers, and academic institutions, her research aims to decrease health disparities and manage chronic illnesses more efficiently.
- Capacity Building within Faith-Based Organizations: She explores how strengthening these organizations can serve as a powerful strategy for developing impactful and enduring health education programs.
- Leadership's Role in Faith-Based Organizations: Her work examines how leadership within these groups can cultivate a culture of wellness in places of worship and their extended communities.
- Holy Books as Tools for Health Behavior Change: Dr. Tettey investigates how texts like the Bible and Koran can be utilized effectively to promote positive health behaviors and lifestyle changes.
- Utilizing Social Media to Combat Health Disparities: She studies how social media platforms can create robust social support networks that enhance health education and contribute to the reduction of health disparities.
Lifestyle Medicine
Lifestyle Medicine and Health Disparities
Dr. Tettey promotes lifestyle medicine as an effective and sustainable approach to community health education. Lifestyle medicine is particularly beneficial for addressing health disparities for several reasons:
- Prevention and Management of Chronic Diseases: Many health disparities are exacerbated by chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases, which are significantly influenced by lifestyle factors including diet, physical activity, and smoking. Lifestyle medicine focuses on modifying these risk factors, which can prevent or manage chronic diseases more effectively across different populations.
- Accessibility and Cost-effectiveness: Lifestyle medicine interventions, such as improving diet and increasing physical activity, can be more accessible and cost-effective compared to traditional medical treatments that involve expensive medications or surgical procedures. This is particularly important for underserved populations who may have limited access to healthcare resources.
- Empowerment and Education: Lifestyle medicine empowers individuals by educating them on how their daily habits and choices impact their health. This knowledge enables people to make informed decisions that improve their own health outcomes. Education is a powerful tool in reducing health disparities as it provides individuals with the means to actively participate in their health improvement.
- Holistic Approach: Lifestyle medicine takes a holistic approach to health by considering the physical, mental, social, and environmental factors that contribute to well-being. This comprehensive approach is crucial in addressing health disparities, as it considers the broader social determinants of health that often disproportionately affect marginalized communities.
- Community Involvement: Many lifestyle medicine programs involve community-based strategies that address specific local needs and resources. This community-oriented approach helps tailor health interventions to the cultural, economic, and environmental factors prevalent in specific areas, making the interventions more effective and sustainable.
- Reduction in Healthcare Utilization: By preventing and managing chronic diseases through lifestyle changes, there is a potential reduction in healthcare utilization, which is particularly beneficial for low-income populations who may struggle with healthcare access and costs. This can lead to improved overall community health and reduced economic burden on the healthcare system.
In essence, lifestyle medicine offers a proactive, preventive, and participatory approach to healthcare, which is crucial for addressing the complex issue of health disparities and promoting equity in health outcomes across different populations.
Food Justice & Decolonization
Dr. Tettey believes that food justice is a critical element in the broader process of decolonization for several key reasons:
- Reclaiming Indigenous Food Systems: Decolonization involves the reclamation and revitalization of indigenous knowledge and cultural practices, which includes traditional food systems and agricultural techniques. These practices were often suppressed or replaced by colonial powers with systems that prioritized export crops and monocultures over local food security and biodiversity.
- Empowerment Through Food Sovereignty: Food justice seeks to empower communities by advocating for food sovereignty, which is the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods. This empowerment allows communities to control their own food systems rather than being dependent on global markets and large agribusinesses that often originate from colonial legacies.
- Addressing Historical and Systemic Inequities: Colonization has often led to systemic inequalities in food access, contributing to significant health disparities among indigenous and marginalized populations. Food justice aims to address these disparities by promoting equitable access to nutritious food, thus supporting the health and well-being of these communities.
- Promoting Environmental Sustainability: Decolonization involves challenging and dismantling the exploitative environmental practices that were often a hallmark of colonial regimes. Food justice includes advocating for sustainable agricultural practices that respect the earth and its resources, which are often aligned with indigenous approaches to land and resource management.
- Cultural Restoration: Food is deeply tied to cultural identity and practices. Food justice supports the restoration of cultural traditions related to food cultivation, preparation, and consumption that have been eroded by colonial influences. This restoration is a form of resistance against cultural assimilation and loss.
- Building Community and Resilience: Food justice fosters community building by encouraging local, community-driven solutions to food production and distribution. This enhances community resilience, enabling a collective response to the challenges posed by the legacies of colonization.
In sum, food justice is essential for decolonization as it addresses the interlinked issues of cultural erasure, economic dependency, and social inequities brought about by colonialism. It represents a fundamental shift towards restoring autonomy, environmental stewardship, cultural identities, and equity in food access, all of which are crucial for the decolonization process.
Recent Publications
"It's Like Backing up Science with Scripture":Lessons Learned from HeartSmarts
Evaluation of HeartSmarts, a Faith-Based Cardiovascular Health Education Program.
Evaluation of HeartSmarts, a Faith-Based Cardiovascular Health Education Program.
African-Americans are disproportionately impacted by cardiovascular disease (CVD). Faith-based institutions provide a non-traditional route for health education targeted at African-Americans. This paper describes HeartSmarts, a faith-based CVD education program. Evidence-based literature was used to develop a curriculum, which was tailored by integrating biblical scripture representing aspects of health behaviors. Eighteen church peer-educators were recruited to participate in a 12-week training. They then disseminated the faith-based curriculum to members of their congregations. There were 199 participants of which 137 provided feedback via open-ended surveys indicating that HeartSmarts was well accepted and effective for disseminating CVD health messages while engaging spirituality.
Evaluation of HeartSmarts, a Faith-Based Cardiovascular Health Education Program.
Evaluation of HeartSmarts, a Faith-Based Cardiovascular Health Education Program.
Evaluation of HeartSmarts, a Faith-Based Cardiovascular Health Education Program.
In order to effectively address cardiovascular disease among African Americans, evidence-based health information must be disseminated within a context aligned with the values and beliefs of the population. Faith-based organizations play a critical role in meeting the religious and spiritual needs of many African Americans. Additionally, faith-based organizations can be effective in health promotion. A manual was created by incorporating biblical scriptures relating to health messages drawn from existing health manuals oriented toward African Americans. Lay health educators active in their churches participated in a 12-week training to learn the basics of cardiovascular disease and methods for delivering the program to their congregations' members. Fourteen predominantly African American churches in NYC participated.
Teaching Health Disparities and the Social Determinants of Health through HBO’s The Wire
Teaching Health Disparities and the Social Determinants of Health through HBO’s The Wire
Teaching Health Disparities and the Social Determinants of Health through HBO’s The Wire
Understanding the social determinants of health, health equity, and social justice from a social ecological perspective is vital for public health students. This paper provides an example of a creative method for teaching health disparities, using the HBO television series The Wire. Methods: The pedagogical strength of The Wire for public health courses is presented, a framework for using this media text in the classroom is shared, and implications for classroom instruction are explored. Conclusions: The Wire is an innovative and effective teaching tool for teaching health disparities and engaging the next generation of public health educators.
Overcoming initial barriers in implementing faith-based health education programs
Teaching Health Disparities and the Social Determinants of Health through HBO’s The Wire
Teaching Health Disparities and the Social Determinants of Health through HBO’s The Wire
Faith-based health education programs are effective in improving the health of participants. Specifically, programs facilitated by churches have provided much-needed health resources and information to underserved communities. Research in this area has focused primarily on the effectiveness of faith-based health interventions. However, it is also important to highlight potential barriers to program implementation. The purpose of this paper is to share the lessons learned from the HeartSmarts faith-based cardiovascular health education program in regard to issues that could occur at the beginning of the program.
Criminal Justice Reform
The Petey Greene Program
New Jersey State Prison Tour
New Jersey State Prison Tour
The United States of America currently incarcerates 2.2 million people. We have more people behind bars than any other country. The people in America’s prisons are disproportionately from minority, low-income, and socially marginalized communities. The experience of incarceration and the consequences of having been to prison - including institutionalized barriers to social welfare programs, housing, employment, voting, higher education, and more - leaves formerly incarcerated people even more likely to remain poor and marginalized. Though the United States spends upwards of $86 billion on corrections each year, incarcerated people are given few resources to facilitate successful re-entry. 90 percent of incarcerated people will be released, but 40 percent will return to prison within three years. Cyclical recidivism weakens communities and families and, in doing so, perpetuates social and economic inequalities. Education has repeatedly been shown to be one of the most effective ways to decrease both crime and the financial and societal costs of incarceration.
The Petey Greene Program supplements education in correctional institutions by preparing volunteers, primarily college students, to provide free, quality tutoring and related programming to support the academic achievement of incarcerated people. Under the guidance of Dr. Tettey, student from William Paterson University have completed all training and will begin tutoring for the Petey Greene program.
New Jersey State Prison Tour
New Jersey State Prison Tour
New Jersey State Prison Tour
As part of her work regarding criminal justice reform, Dr. Tettey took a group of her students to tour New Jersey State Prison. The tour was very educational and touched upon all aspects of public health. Students were able to witness how the inmates live and explore some major public health issues such as policies surrounding transgender inmates and undiagnosed/untreated mental illness.
The highlight of the trip was meeting with two inmates and having an in-depth conversation with them about their experiences. They have both been incarcerated for 30 years and are serving life sentences. They discussed the many social determinants that are leading to mass incarceration including the school to prison pipeline and poverty. This was a full circle moment for the students because these are the topics they discuss in their health disparities class.