Kistein Monkhouse is a health equity expert, and the founder & CEO of Patient Orator. Born in Guyana, she grew up in Queens NY, where she attended Bryant High school and Queens College before attending Long Island University gaining a Master's degree in Public Administration with a concentration in Public Health. She bootstrapped her startup and led it to national recognition from J&J Impact Ventures, Westchester County Bioscience program, etc. Kistein has spoken and authored articles at Health Datapalooza of Acadamy Health, Washington D.C, and contributed thought-leadership to PBS News Hour, Next Avenue, WAMU/NPR's 1A show, etc. She is a 4x international award-winning storyteller, receiving awards from film festivals in India, Italy, and the USA for her activism in health, health equity, and women's health, using film. In 2021 Kistein was named a Vital Voice fellow and later named an Aspen Ideas Health fellow in 2022.
As someone who has seen firsthand that health access is not often granted equally nor is the opportunity for all people to be heard by healthcare professionals, she is passionate about ensuring that people regardless of their race, sex, or socioeconomic status be heard in their healthcare interactions to improve health outcomes. As a patient-innovator, she is using health tech to standardize the measurement of social determinants of health data at and beyond the point of care to address health inequities by fostering shared-decision making between individuals and their care teams. As a patient, Kistein has experienced delayed diagnosis for her pain symptoms resulting in several years of delayed care and treatment for her health condition Uterine Fibroids. This keeps her passionate about addressing health access for underserved communities. She serves as a patient advocate, board member, and advisor to various grassroots and national organizations working on a more equitable future of care and health access for all humans.
