About

Arbre’ya Lewis is a passionate student, leader, and health communications specialist.

Her work and interests intricately connect a broad range of industries including education, health, media, and journalism. All of her pursuits are driven by her desire to help create an equitable landscape for health literacy and education to improve both individual and population health.

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Health Communications Specialist

Health and medical information can sometimes feel like the pills doctors prescribe to us… hard to swallow. I’m here to help make those messages a bit easier to get down.

The value of storytelling has become increasingly emphasized in all spaces. Anyone can craft a message and hand information to the public, but not everyone can effectively enact change. I generally focus on behavior change so with that as my endgoal, I know I better send a pretty interesting message to people. I noticed the importance of medical message delivery when watching *way too much* Grey’s Anatomy during my first year as an undergrad at Duke University. The drama got me, and I became interested in learning how the media gets health information delivery right.

During my undergraduate education at Duke, I created my major and titled it “Visualizing Medicine: The Role of the Media in Healthcare Communication”. I wanted to learn more about the power that media (especially television) has as a communication medium for health information delivery. It was through those studies that I learned more about entertainment education, a communication strategy that I take with me as a route by which to educate the public about important health and social issues.

After graduating from Duke in 2018, I forwent graduate school for a year to serve as a College Adviser with Duke University College Advising Corps. As a low-income, first generation, minority college student – I always make an effort to serve as a mentor and resource to others. Gaining access to resources to attain higher education and greater social success can be difficult. I do my best to reach out to educate those who can be impacted. The intentional experiences I had working with these students affected me beyond being a moral high-ground; it continues to inform the purpose behind the work I do in public health communication.

The research I conduct and the work I create is centered around providing digestible information to minority communities – specifically people of color. My aim is to educate, empower, and embolden the black community to lead holistically healthy lives through creative work and storytelling. I believe that communication needs to be constant, clear and truthful to be effective.

I currently am pursuing my Master’s of Public Health at Emory University in the Behavior and Social Sciences and Health Education department. My expertise spans the realm of health communication and ventures off into social media creative, strategy building, healthcare and health promotion marketing, website development, and more. In the future, I seek to continue in my ventures to improve population health – especially in pursuit of minority health equity – through creative roles.

What I Do

Favorite Quote

“Even this I get to experience.” – (Norman Lear, 2014)

The opportunities that I have to impact the lives and understanding of people in ways that they are not privy to is such a privilege. I recognize that and make every effort possible to be cognizant of that in both the workplace and the communities I engage with.