Rana Sakr is a Kennett Square resident and the first pioneer Director of Health Literacy at the Kennett Library. She is leading the “Live Better” health awareness initiative, which aims at raising the health and wellness knowledge bar for the broader community.
Born in Lebanon, a student in France, and a resident of California for six years, this new American citizen is tri-lingual and has a medical degree in Endocrinology. Above all, she has a passion for public health awareness and community education.
In speaking to Rana, one experiences the fresh energy that comes with someone coming to our country and discovering the culture that we may take for granted. Her husband was being transferred to the Philadelphia area and together they decided they wanted to settle into a smaller community.
She explained how COVID caused her, along with her husband, to pause their life in France and look at the kind of stability they hoped for their two daughters, now six and five years old. They knew Lebanon was not an option economically and socially.
Rana was emphatic, “We made a deliberate choice to come back to this country. My husband grew up in the United States and I became a citizen in 2017. We see Americans as being the most honest culture; America, even with its issues, has given us opportunities for growth.”
The family first rented a townhouse in Kennett Square borough and after six months bought another close to the borough. Rana said, “Kennett Square is a unique and special community. The people are friendly, it is walkable, along with having great schools. Best of all, it has an outstanding library. Libraries have always been a lifesaver for me, wherever we moved, and the Kennett Library has become the same for me here.”
Rana started out as a volunteer at the library in 2021 providing French immersion sessions in the Children’s Library. From there, she was hired as a part time employee to the position of Library Assistant at the Circulation Desk and now with the new library opening is leading Health Literacy since November 2023.
From the time she started at the library, Rana worked on finding the health resources and organizations in the area. She was a certified patient educator in France so was already formulating an organized plan of how a health literacy effort would roll out.
She organized a Health Literacy committee, which meets the first Thursday of the month at 10am at the library and is proud of the long list of collaborators. This committee decides together the topics that will be addressed in health education activities. They are providing a framework and process for potential collaborators to work within to ensure quality programming. This year’s goals revolve around mental health, substance use challenges, diabetes and nutrition challenges.
Currently there are members from Chester County Hospital; Kennett Community Grocers; WHY; CCMCHC; Red Cross; ACE’s Coalition; Suicide Prevention Task Force; Kennett Area Senior Center; KACS; Kendal-Crossland communities; The Center for Change; Kennett Outdoors; YMCA; New Horizons Recovery Center; Chester County Immunization Coalition; United Way of Southern Chester County, LCH, Longwood Fire Department, the Garage Youth Center, and HLAA.
Rana is pleased with the way the Kennett library’s web site identifies the health and wellness activities. In viewing the upcoming events online, one will quickly locate the next health and wellness activities by color. The library has just hosted a Red Cross Day on March 4th. The next “Live Better” activities in April will be: ‘What are you pumped up to be?” and a drawing campaign to empower youth with type 1 diabetes, and the “Family Walkfest,” a walking loop in town. There are also passive public displays of health resources at the library.
In our dialogue about health and wellness, Rana agreed that learning about how to live better is an ongoing process. Those who attend presentations will be called to become invested in their own health, along with their families and community’s; that is, if wellness is to be the outcome. It involves a seriousness about making life changes, which isn’t always easy, yet very rewarding and life-giving.
The “Live Better” activities provide the opportunity to meet as a collective and experience that one is not alone, opening up the potential for awareness of new health and wellness resources and buddy support for individuals. Representatives of organizations may also find ways to collaborate and enhance their services at these gatherings. The Kennett Library, as a free public space, offers to be their health education resource center.
“Live Better” is an exciting initiative that the Kennett Library is offering.
For more information, proposal submission, invitation for monthly “Live Better” meetings, support and sponsorship, please email [email protected]
With the intensity and caring that Rana Sakr and her committee are putting into the effort, it is destined to grow and develop and raise the health and wellness bar in the Kennett community. Rana’s great appreciation for the growth that America offers us is contagious. Isn’t it time for all of us to become invested in living better?
The Story of Kennett – Shaping the future one child at a time” Joan Holliday and Bob George’s book on Kennett may be purchased on Amazon and at the Mushroom Cap. You may contact Joan at: [email protected]