N.Y.-Area Hospital, WNJU Launch Health Series

‘¡A tu salud!' to Air Saturdays on Telemundo O&O

By Laura Martinez -- Multichannel News, 1/18/2012 3:43:09 PM

U.S. Hispanics might overindex in the use of mobile devices and broadband adoption, but when it comes to access to Spanish-language health information, they are still way behind.

Hoping to change that, at least in metropolitan New York, The Mount Sinai Hospital has produced ¡A tu salud! a weekly health and wellness TV series to air Saturdays on WNJU-TV, Telemundo's owned-and-operated station in New York.

"We realized there was this lack of health literacy among Latino patients, and asked ourselves, ‘What can we do to help educate this community?' " Mount Sinai president and chief operating officer Wayne Keathley said.

The series, which premiered Jan. 7, will run for 13 episodes and is co-hosted by Yamila Constantino, a former Bloomberg News editor, and Mount Sinai's Dr. Eliscer Guzman. The duo shares information about common ailments affecting the Latino community including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

While Keathley makes it clear the series is not intended to be a commercial for The Mount Sinai Hospital, he says the use of commercial media has been proven very "powerful" to reach a large group of people.

The hospital, founded in 1852, has embarked in in-language, health outreach programs targeting the Russian and Greek communities in New York City, but the Spanish initiative airing on WNJU is being pitched as "the most elaborate and substantive effort" ever launched to serve a specific ethnic community.