Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick has spent her entire adult life answering people’s questions about health care — and not just for her patients. “My family, [my] friends would leave the doctor’s office and then send me a text message: ‘Here’s what he said. Like, what does that mean?’” Fitzpatrick said.
Over her decades in government, academia, and hospital medicine, she’s witnessed the consequences of people in her community not understanding or trusting their health care provider: Black people report higher levels of mistrust in the health care system than white Americans and suffer worse outcomes in everything from maternal mortality to mental health to life expectancy.
Fitzpatrick has long believed those disparities could be shrunk if the health care community did a better job of explaining health information in simple terms and engaging trusted messengers — in other words, sending better messages from better messengers. She found early in her career that she had a gift for breaking down complex health care ideas, and as a Black physician, Fitzpatrick’s friends and family often trusted her more than their own usually white doctors.
“I was always thinking about, ‘How can I reach more people?’ Because if you don’t understand something, it can be very scary. And when you’re afraid, you avoid, you delay. And that leads to worse health outcomes, it leads to death,” Fitzpatrick said.
That’s why she founded Grapevine Health, a startup she believes can help more people understand their health care. Grapevine creates short videos featuring Black and other doctors of color explaining everything from kidney disease to how to sign up for Medicaid.