Arts, Culture, and Museums
Marcel Foster, MPH (they/them/theirs)
Faculty
Center for Arts in Medicine at University of Florida , United States
Thomas Brazzle, MFA (he/him/his)
Program Arts Director
Out of Hand Theater, Georgia, United States
Location: Grand Ballroom 7
Overview: Stories are powerful. Whether these stories are verifiably accurate or complete misinformation, historically celebrated or systematically excluded, our stories anchor our experiences, perceptions, and realities. In the wake of the pandemic, the power of these various narratives are acutely evident when considering COVID vaccine deliberation. Most especially, with the backdrop of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and centuries of medical apartheid impacting Black people in the US, confidence in the benefits of a government-supported vaccine is justifiably questionable. However, data evidence clearly demonstrates that the COVID vaccine is beneficial, most especially for Black Americans, who continue to experience disproportionately higher rates of severe COVID symptoms, compared to other racial demographics in the US. These complex, contrasting, and powerful narratives of health and vaccine deliberation were addressed by Atlanta’s Out of Hand Theatre (OOHT), with funding from the CDC Foundation and the Georgia (GA) Department of Public Health, to ground creative storytelling as a method for health promotion and evaluation.
Panel
Description: During this 60-minute session, we will describe the process of engaging with Black citizens in rural GA from 2021 to now, in order to better understand how to empathetically acknowledge the complexities of choosing to get vaccinated or not. Additionally, we will detail how our team of artists and evaluators collaborated to translate these qualitative transcripts into artistic assets, which are now used as an instrument to address vaccine deliberation throughout rural Georgia. Including a live performance as part of this program, we will then engage with conference attendees to explore our evaluation findings and assess the impact on the power of an arts and health program. The findings include an RShiny dashboard visualizing survey results from our 27 (and counting) events, vaccine uptake statistics related to the intervention, as well as participatory engagement with the audiences, facilitated by theater artists. By focusing on creative storytelling as a method for evaluation, participants will walk away from this session with an expanded understanding on the intersections of power, anti-racism, stories, health, and creative methods.
Presenter: Tiffany Porter, n/a – Out of Hand Theater
Presenter: Thomas Brazzle, MFA (he/him/his) – Out of Hand Theater