W H A T ' S ?
Our Mission
To improve public health literacy and increase general health awareness by expanding access to realistic health information.
Our Vision
To empower individuals with the knowledge they need to advocate for their health and make informed decisions about their well-being. ​​​​
Our Values
Sustainability – to work preventatively rather than follow the solution and results-based model of our medical system. We prioritize stability and long-lasting change
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Feasibility – not chasing for the biggest or brightest, but instead conducting work that is most likely to be successfully implemented in real circumstances, and as such achieve truly visible and effective change
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Equity and inclusion – to deliver information and services through creative, diversified, and realistic mediums and to maximize accessibility and pathways between the public and health information.
Our Goals
We hope to motivate individuals to share their thoughts, experiences and research on health. We aspire to make health knowledge accessible and literate for all, promoting a healthier society.
As such, KTK doesn’t claim to be an accredited, validated, nor professional source of medical information, instruction or advice.
The focus is on expanding the conversation and awareness on self-advocacy for public health. Our aim is to build the bridge, so that others may cross it.
W H O ' S ?
Our Founder:
At eight years old, Sarah was admitted to the hospital with Diabetic Ketoacidosis. For months, she and those around her didn’t recognize the signs of onset type 1 diabetes. This lack of awareness led to a delayed response to her deteriorating health. What was of greater concern, was that she was reprimanded and blamed for her symptoms and change in behavior.
Sarah was born in New Zealand before moving to Shanghai for her early childhood. Her teenage years were spent at boarding school in the States. Today, she is an undergraduate student studying health industry and policy for epidemiology, while following a pre-health path. Sarah also pursues both academic and extracurricular interests in humanitarian and advocacy work.
As a pediatric patient, Sarah’s high environmental and cultural mobility subjected her to inconsistent care and resources. Her physician’s diverse medical approaches often clashed. As a result, her treatment was always objective, focusing only on her physical wellbeing. Consequently, she had to blindly navigate the tangential effects of chronic disease on her own.
Over the years, on top of her blood sugar control, Sarah was able to self-manage and develop her mental, emotional and supportive diabetic care. Her background gave her better access to resources and opportunities. Through this complex journey, however, she realized how fortunate she was, compared to the many others left unjustly unable to access or comprehend informative resources - unable to better their wellbeing, or empathize with and advocate for others around them. This fueled her lifelong passion for improving access-to and quality-of healthcare. Her own hardships motivate her to try and ease similar obstacles for others.
Through Know the Known, she is taking a step towards expanding awareness and conversation surrounding health, as well as increasing opportunity for others like her to take control of their own wellbeing. In the future, she hopes to alleviate further dire healthcare disparities and obstacles, ones that prevent thousands from accessing life pivotal information, education, and medical care - from knowing what is known.
W H Y ?
Poor health literacy is the patient zero of the needs-and-problems pandemic in our society. All else fails without health, and proper health fails without knowledge.
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The knowledge gap between the everyday person and medical physicians is extremely wide, creating a barrier between becoming health literate or interested in learning more about general wellbeing. ​By increasing the presence and legibility of health and wellbeing knowledge, KTK hopes to create opportunities of self-identification and encouragement to seek further resources. It is also a space to build connections between people interested in becoming more health literate, passionate about general wellbeing, experiencing similar struggles or opinions in individual health, and build communities of support.
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Improving health literacy is the most efficient and sustainable solution for all issues of public wellbeing. It may not yield the most immediate nor prominent results, but it is the most effective. There has long been a chase to see the grandest and fastest results in medicine, but this is the wrong agenda to follow: if it doesn’t last, then what was the use? was anything really achieved?
New medical breakthroughs and discoveries have long been the focal point of public health efforts – we keep trying to uncover the unknown. However, this misguided ambition for the future shadows over those who are still struggling in the present.
There already exists much health information and resources, but much of the public for which it is meant to serve aren’t literate nor aware of this health information. People don’t know what is known.
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A large part of health educative goals are to raise awareness of public wellbeing on a the global scale. Health awareness and literacy is the foundational first step in expanding access and quality in healthcare. Empowering advocacy through knowledge is the only way we can broaden the scope of healthcare, and eventually work to alleviate shortcomings in public health.
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