While volunteering at the CommunityHealth clinic in Chicago last summer, Weinberg senior Jenny Klein said she began to notice a pattern: nearly every patient had high cholesterol.
Klein, a volunteer medical interpreter at the free clinic, said she found that many patients struggled to manage their heart health at home. Between literacy disparities, language barriers and limited face-to-face time with doctors during check ups, these patients lacked information to properly address their cholesterol issues, Klein said.
“If people really want to make dietary changes, I’d assume they’d need more than a two-minute spiel,” Klein said. “We need to give them something to actually help them figure out how to do it on their own.”
Klein is the president and co-founder of All In, a Northwestern club founded last spring that partners with CommunityHealth to advance medical equity and community welfare in the Chicago area. In addition to organizing clinic trips and recruiting volunteers for CommunityHealth, the club has been developing a cookbook to help patients manage their cholesterol with heart-healthy recipes.
As one of the nation’s largest volunteer-based health centers, CommunityHealth provides over 17,000 free healthcare visits to low-income uninsured adults in Chicago each year. The clinic serves a large population of Spanish and Polish speakers, Klein said, with nearly half of patients living below the federal poverty line.
Klein said All In hopes to make the cookbook free and accessible to patients regardless of their language, literacy level or income. The cookbook’s heart-healthy recipes are meant to be culturally familiar and low-cost, she added. Each recipe includes step-by-step photos, and the club plans to distribute translated versions in Spanish and Polish.
For Weinberg senior and All In Vice President Rachel Meiselman, seeing club members with a variety of skill sets come together to develop the cookbook this year has been both impressive and fulfilling.
“We’ve garnered so many people to work on this project,” Meiselman said. “They’re all like-minded people that really care about this cause. … It’s one of the most rewarding things about the club.”
Meiselman said the club spent Fall Quarter researching cholesterol issues and heart-healthy ingredient substitutions, then finalized and tested each recipe in Winter Quarter. Now, club members are working on formatting recipes and writing a health education section for the cookbook.
The collaborative element of the cookbook has been especially fun, Weinberg freshman Alexa Barrera said. Barrera, who has been involved with All In since the fall, added that she appreciates the opportunity to help underserved communities through her work on campus.
“I just like the club’s mission,” Barrera said. “It makes making a difference and helping the community feel very accessible.”
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