By Dr. Melanie Stone, DrPH, MEd, co-director of Health Confianza, Assistant Professor of Family & Community Medicine and Director of Community Engaged Learning.
As we close out 2025 and step into a new year, many of us are reflecting, setting goals, and recommitting to our health and well-being. But a critical question remains: How do we ensure everyone in our community has a real opportunity to be healthy?
At Health Confianza, we believe the answer starts with health literacy—making sure people can access, understand, and use health information and services. Every day, our neighbors are flooded with information, yet too often left unsure how to act on it. We’re working to change that.
In this issue, you’ll see how we’re reimagining health communication in creative and human-centered ways. Our Health Confianza ambassadors are gathering community input through conversation and the joyful act of coloring—creating space for authentic voices to be heard. At the same time, we’re exploring innovative tools like artificial intelligence, using a virtual “community microphone” that allows people to speak freely and have their insights instantly summarized.
Together with partners like the YWCA, we’re launching maternal health clubs that support peer-to-peer learning throughout pregnancy and new motherhood. We collaborated with marketing experts to create a local preventive health campaign that makes staying healthy both easy and fun.
Through our strong partnership with Southside Collaborative, we celebrated their first-ever health fair that drew more than 700 community members.
Additionally, we completed a Learning Collaborative with seven local organizations now applying organizational health literacy principles to improve how clients experience their services. And this fall, our ECHO telementoring series brought health professionals and community health workers together to strengthen plain-language communication—highlighted by Dr. Matt Dacso’s practical approach to discussing genetics.
As Dr. Jason Rosenfeld shared in our first issue, this work is about leading and communicating with confianza—confidence grounded in trust, knowledge, and unity. As we move into the new year, we’re grateful to be part of this growing Confianza Collective and excited to continue innovating together to help individuals and families make informed decisions that support lifelong health.