Josh Deutsch straddles two worlds with a common theme: as a father, he uses storytelling when he spends time with his children, narrating picture books to his 2 – and 5-year-olds or reading to them for hours on end; and as a doctor, by listening to the stories of his patients, and telling them stories in return, as a means of communicating medical information.
“Every time I’m with a patient, I listen to their story and try to figure out where their story goes, and where it should go,” Deutsch says. “The better I understand, the more I can offer good information to them.”
As a family practice physician at Mee Memorial Hospital and at the hospital’s Greenfield clinic, Deutsch sees many patients who are low-income and are often first – or second-generation farmworkers, and the rates of prediabetes and diabetes he sees in patients is especially high. Deutsch, who earned a master’s of public health from UC Berkeley and ran a business installing backyard food gardens before going to medical school, found that changing health behavior – especially diet – was a challenge.
“It’s a very difficult thing to do outside of a home, to change eating habits. They have to go home and there’s all the sodas and chips, and they should throw it away, because as long as it’s in the house, they’re going to eat it,” Deutsch says. “I thought very few people would do it. It became a question of, ‘How can I convey this story better?’”
The answer he found was creating an actual story – bringing fictional characters to life and putting them in a situation that the youngest patients could relate to.
So he started writing and publishing books as a part of his health care work.
One of his first books, illustrated by Afzal Khan, is the 37-page How Tia Guadalupe Beat Diabetes. It tells the story of a girl named Zenaya, who accompanies her aunt Guadalupe to a doctor’s appointment to act as her translator when she receives the results of blood tests to determine if she’s diabetic. At the appointment, Guadalupe learns she has diabetes, and the doctor explains what she should do to lessen its impact – eat healthy, and exercise. If she can lose five pounds in a few months, the doctor tells her, she might not need medication.
Zenaya, as the narrator, admits she’s afraid for her whole family. Her grandparents have diabetes too, but her aunt doesn’t want to burden the family by requesting the household change its eating habits. Zenaya sets out on a mission, speaking to her neighbor, a fieldworker and gardener; he teaches her about fresh food and how he ate in Oaxaca, meals that centered around beans, fresh vegetables and corn tortillas.
It’s a village diet, Zenaya’s grandfather says, and he and the family take Zenaya’s request to heart. Her mother gets rid of soda and junk food, Guadalupe starts gentle exercise, the family plants a food garden and at her next doctor’s appointment, Guadalupe finds out she doesn’t need medication.
The relatable family story and the healthier “village” eating advice, inspired in part by the time Deutsch spent living in Central America, are parts of a bigger picture. Deutsch thought fictional characters might direct patients in a way a physician couldn’t.
The impact on patients (coupled with the fact that he was promoting reading) inspired him to keep writing. He’s published two other books – Animal Alphabet Alliterations, aimed at helping kids learn to read, and Jugemos/Play, a wordless picture book aimed at helping parents who can’t read tell stories to their children.
Deutsch has made the books free for electronic distribution, while hard copies can be purchased from Amazon and IngramSpark, with profits going toward free book distribution through well-child visits, starting with Mee Memorial’s Greenfield clinic.
“I got into public health as a vehicle for social justice and political change,” Deutsch says, “and I like to create things on my own, new ways of helping people and innovating and seeing if I can inspire others to follow suit.”