ArtScience for Health Awareness in Brazil

Excerpt

This chapter describes the development and use of ArtScience-based activities incorporating multiple artistic languages, such as games, music and art workshops, science fiction dialogue circles, and production of materials for healthcare communication with teenagers and adults in socio-environmentally vulnerable areas with a high disease prevalence. These new ArtScience strategies and actions were used to address health awareness related to social, environmental, and biological determinants involved in the transmission of dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever by the Aedes aegypti mosquito in urban areas in Latin America, where traditional educational actions have not been effective. Images, sound, films, and texts on both the mosquito and the socio-environmental settings associated with the health care conditions were used for awareness raising. The participants produced photographs to stimulate the act of viewing through scientific and artistic perspectives; discussed texts; wrote narratives on health care; engaged in handicraft production; and composed songs. Participants also debated social inequalities and environmental problems directly related to disease carrier agents. We learned that a rich dialogue occurred between scientific and popular forms of knowledge, promoting citizenship. In conclusion, collaborative and creative solutions supported the process of empowering young people as multipliers for the control and prevention of diseases and for health awareness promotion.