We’re surrounded by fake news, sensationalism, and fictitious drama. We love it, let’s face it. Our media consumption, especially in Western countries, relies on pompous stories that are grand, majestic, and profitable. If you don’t create any “woah” moments, you lose readers, clients, consumers, and ultimately money. We want to see who’s right and who’s wrong right away. Miseducation is, unfortunately, in fashion.

Watching documentaries like Super Size Me (2004) or Not So Pretty (2022) exposes us members of the general public to fear and paranoia, but also to information and awareness, which would not be possible to effectively grasp if we were taught certain issues in other contexts, like in schools. However, mainstream media should include more pieces that come from scientific literature or at least provide products like movies, tv-series, and social panels that discuss these materials.

Science and medicine can be great subjects to study, but they can also be pretty intimidating. I never was a science nerd, nor a medicine person. I would admire my friends and peers getting into these subjects while we were in school, but I would always have a really hard time finding a tiny ounce of interest during science class. Chemistry, mathematics, and physics have always been a big challenge to me. There were certain things that I would grasp and find interesting, like computing chemical equations or dealing with proportions in math, but the majority of the arguments we would go over had no impact on my brain: just headaches.

Because of math and science, I wasn’t able to graduate with a full A from Hofstra University. Science and math in English were a true challenge for me, especially when I was mentally ready to get rid of these topics in my academic curriculum. However, I overcame the challenges, passed the classes, and retained very little information (honestly, my professors were not that good nor did they motivate me enough to get interested in the subjects). During my Master, I had to take a class on Natural Sciences as part of my mandatory schedule. At first, I was scared, because even though I understood the reasons why this course would have been important for the overall program, I felt discouraged by the fact that I had to face once again topics that for long years haunted me and made me fall behind in school for lack of interest and motivation. Nevertheless, this course was very much different from what I had expected.

Through these weeks we’ve been learning the different roles that science and medicine signify on a larger scale in our society. We dissected the impacts that these disciplines have had on minority groups in the USA, but also in many other countries. We focused mostly on African American women, how their presence in science and medicine was pivotal in making changes, shifting perceptions, and opening up certain possibilities on the job market (by representing their heritage and gender). I read about Trinidadian Harlem-based medical doctor and social activist Muriel Petioni, Dr. Patricia Bath (ophthalmologist and inventor of the Laserphaco Probe, the laser cataract surgery), and Dr. Evelyn Hammonds (professor of History of Science and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University), to name a few. It was refreshing to discover these stories and the works of these women.

Because of these readings and the lectures with my professor (Dr. Gillian Bayne), I understood the importance of science literacy and how its access can change people’s lives.

Science literacy is the collection of knowledge through applicable and certified data that can be used to address societal issues. The methods with which data is collected and treated are unbiased and serve to find solutions to problems that are affecting specific groups of people, animals, and other ecosystems of living beings.

During this semester I’ve also engaged in multiple kinds of readings on my own. I came across adrienne marie brown’s book called Emergent Strategy, which elevated and clarified my intentions in being part of social activism through personal writing, academia, and entrepreneurial settings. Reading this book (which happened to be by chance, not planned at all!) was pivotal in connecting the dots between science literacy and social activism, especially when crafted and focused on minority groups like Black African American women and members of the African Diaspora. Evidence in science can reflect many of our social patterns, and how we see, move, and practice love in our communities.

I thought about the traumas that Western medicine has left on the common imaginary within the Black and Hispanic communities in the USA, specifically on women. Let’s think about the many atrocities operated on African women like Henrietta Lacks or the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, conducted with the racist assumption that Black women and men couldn’t feel pain nor were worth knowing ethical procedures. How about the hundreds of Puerto Rican women used as guinea pigs for birth control development by the American government? Or how the Black body was being made fun of for its shape, with women like Sarah Baartman? There shouldn’t be any shock to see and understand the lack of faith that the Black and Brown communities have in regards to Western medicine, specifically the North American system. With COVID-19, the majority of my Black and Brown friends and acquaintances have demonstrated disgust and disapproval towards the vaccines and other medical practices.

Coming from Italy and born into a family of pharmacists and scientists, medicine was always taken for granted. Since very young I received any kind of treatment that could help me fix my teeth, provide me vaccines to travel to tropical countries like Brazil (against many diseases like zika), my childhood development (I was born prematurely), through healthy and sustainable diets and physical movement. Until my college years, I took that for granted and thought that being able to have this kind of service was going to be easy and possible from the very start. I never had heard traumatic stories affecting Black people nor narratives from the History of Medicine. My experience changed, of course, once I came to the USA. During my undergraduate years, I never entered a hospital nor had any physical problems to check upon. However, once COVID-19 hit and quarantine dove into our lives, my body felt the need to be checked and I started having some problems. I saw the terrible system this country is infected with greediness and lack of empathy coming from medical doctors, their assistants, and the bureaucratic craziness (I’m talking about insurance and high prices for simple check-ups). In addition to that, I saw how the discourse on vaccines was very much differently treated by BIPOC Americans and Black Italians, with the former ones being more opponents of the directions given by the government. At first, I was confused that many of my friends wouldn’t get the importance of the vaccine because without it I wasn’t able to see my family for almost two years and a lot of my friends in other countries were begging for the free cures that the American government was giving at the time to its people, compared to other countries policies. I could see the privileges on both ends, mine and theirs. I saw how they were right in allocating the wrongs done by the government, but I was also confused and not always on the same page when it came to believing science or not (anti-vax or pro-vax). I could also see a lot of miseducation, especially on the Internet. This hurt me and I wanted to understand why it was so difficult for a country like the USA to operate in a better way for its people and to also transmit more faith in science and medicine to its citizens. My answer: science literacy isn’t available and viable as it should be.

Science literacy isn’t an immediate discipline that is understood right away. It could be broken down with easier and more common terms for the sake of information and to spread practical news on disease, condition, or medical topics. The materials that I’ve come across with are most of the time not disclosed to the public, since they are private and located only within academic space, where it is needed an enrollment or access of a similar type to read the data. Not everyone has the time or the money to do so. Even I, a graduate student who benefits from the use of academic and scholarly material, can’t have enough time to go through all these documents and certify everything that is written. However, I found some ways with which I can easily access more scientific literature.

• Check websites that end on .org, .gov., or .co. Usually, these websites (especially those that end in .org) are run by medical institutions and they provide papers and journals that are useful for your quick research.

• Don’t panic if you can’t understand all the material you end up finding. Sometimes I can’t either, but what I do is check the abstract, the very first part of an academic paper. It’s basically a short summary of the document. Very useful, because some papers are extremely long (and tedious sometimes!)

• Follow people who have earned or are completing a Ph.D. No, I’m not saying this because they’re smarter or richer, or have anything else more than you. The only thing that they actually have is time to focus on specific topics, especially in medicine. For people in minority groups, follow and read materials produced by BIPOC, Latinx, or AAPI professionals, who tend to be less biased and detailed in the study of their communities, culturally speaking.

Science literacy is important for us to make constructive decisions for both our singular and community bodies. You’re the only one who knows what’s good for your own organism and mental health. You should have the right to explore a higher number of options and solutions to get rid of any pain, constraint, or medical impediment. Our health, especially for us minorities, is at stake and not always protected. Making use of science literacy allows us to be better people, much more informed and active in our lives.