By Khalida Sarwari
At a Stanford University summer camp three years ago, Sanj Nalwa was asked to identify a health issue in his community, and then find a way to address it.
Some of Sanj’s peers targeted issues such as childhood obesity, female body image and clean drinking water. But from conversations with his mother, Sanj knew there was another problem hardly anyone was talking about: In neighboring San Jose, low-income women were not receiving prenatal care.
With his mother, a San Jose doctor who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, and other mentors as a resource, the Saratoga High School senior began delving into the problem. The first step was to pinpoint barriers to prenatal care for low- income women.
“What happens in these communities still affects us,” said Sanj. “It still concerns us whether a low-income pregnant woman receives care or not.”
Out of Sanj’s efforts was born the Baby Advocacy club, an on-campus group and later, a nonprofit called the Baby Advocacy Project. The first was founded two years ago and functions mainly as the fundraising arm for the nonprofit. The club aims to spread awareness about the importance of prenatal care and to engage local youth.
“What we are trying to do is make youth realize that there’s a sort of interconnectedness,” Sanj said. “That’s important to make sure it is part of our ideals, that we go out and help communities even though we may not live in them.”
The nonprofit group is where the 17-year-old Sanj focuses most of his energies. Founded with a group of his friends, the Baby Advocacy Project is dedicated to reducing the barriers to prenatal care faced by lower-income women in San Jose.
From interviewing various physicians and clinic staff in San Jose, Sanj learned about the barriers that prevent women in some communities from seeking prenatal care. He found that the primary impediments are lack of transportation, language and cultural differences, and fear of deportation.
“A lot of these problems we saw really shouldn’t be problems,” said Sanj. “Immigration status does not play a role. They don’t deny a woman care because of her immigration status.”
Last summer, Sanj standardized the information-gathering process by creating surveys that he and other members, such as Aria Hooman and Elise Mun, distributed to low-income pregnant Hispanic women in San Jose. From those results, he and his team put together a brochure in both English and Spanish that they are delivering to local clinics, such as The Health Trust and Planned Parenthood, as well as grocery stores and other places pregnant women are likely to frequent. They’ve thus far printed 2,000 copies.
The brochure contains information about the availability of free bus tokens at clinics, assures women that their immigration status will not be a factor when they seek prenatal care and notifies them that Spanish speakers are always available at clinics. The next–and most challenging–step is to find a way to measure the impact of the brochures.
Through his work on this issue, Sanj said his passion for public health and social service has intensified. He has plans to pursue the subjects next year in college and beyond.
“This whole thing was started because we thought the status quo is not really doing a good enough job of making sure that everybody gets the health care they need,” he said. “I want to hopefully revolutionize the way we think of health care initiatives, the way we try to address social issues.”
On a personal level, Sanj said the project has helped him appreciate the struggles women face, especially those that are pregnant and juggling work and family.
“A lot of times when I tell people I’m working on this, they say, ‘What the heck? You’re a 17-year-old boy; why do you care about Hispanic women in San Jose?’ I guess I’ve gained a lot of empathy for people with different social backgrounds and for women, which I wouldn’t have gained if I hadn’t worked on this project so intently the past couple of years,” he said.
For more information about the Baby Advocacy Project, visit babyadvocacy.org.
