The arts have long been used to communicate messages, raise awareness, and bring about change. Hear more about collaborative projects connecting art to health, resiliency, and advocacy. Guests: Adriane Ackerman, Pima County Health Department; Anne Bluethenthal, Founder, Lead Artist, ABD/Skywatchers; Rabbi Nancy Epstein, MPH, MAHL, Drexel University; Sadie Shaw, The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona.
Learning Objectives:
- Discuss ways that art may be incorporated into health promotion, advocacy, and social justice.
- Examine ways professional artists, health professionals, and the community may collaborate for improving population health and health equity.
- Describe evaluation frameworks for art-based initiatives.
Target Audience: Public Health Professionals, Community Services Providers
Duration: 40 minutes
Continuing Education Information: 0.75 Category 1 Credits for CHES
CHES Provider number: 99036Format: Podcast, Self-Study
Recorded: 1/2023
Guests:
- Sadie Shaw. The Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona. https://artsfoundtucson.org/programs/saludarte/
- Rabbi Nancy Epstein, MPH, MAHL. Clinical Professor in Community Health and Prevention, Dornsife School of Public Health at Drexel University. Director of the school's Arts in Public Health program.
- Anne Bluethenthal. Founder, Lead Artist, ABD /Skywatchers. https://www.abdproductions.org/
- Adriane Ackerman. Program Director for Advancing Health Literacy, Pima County Health Department.
Hosted by: Allison Root, DrPH, MS, RDN, MCHES®
Guest Bios:
Adriane Ackerman (she/her/ella) is the Program Director for the Pima County Health Department’s Advancing Health Literacy to Enhance Equitable Community Response to COVID-19 program. She also leads the Cultural Health/SaludArte initiative and the emerging Pima County Network for Equity and Resilience (PCNER), both of which aim to increase health literacy and equity through innovative models, by elevating and centering the leadership of historically excluded communities. Adriane has over 20 years of experience managing, administrating, facilitating and convening partnerships within the public sector at the local, regional and national scale. Her proudest moments have come from her decades’ of work as a grassroots community organizer, building sustainable and disruptive coalitions across ideologies, platforms and issues. Adriane holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Urban & Public Affairs and seeks to bring the depth of her lived experience to her work in Pima County.
Anne Bluethenthal is the Founder/Artistic Director of ABD Productions, a performing arts company committed to inspiring social change through the arts. Her choreographic language troubles the paradigm of western dance in service of choreographies that face difficult issues of the day with eloquence and passion. Her work grows from the belief that relationship is the first site of social change. After building a repertoire of original works over 3 decades, Bluethenthal initiated the Skywatchers program, rooted in SF’s Tenderloin District. A multi-ethnic mixed-ability, community-based performing arts ensemble of Bay Area artists and Tenderloin neighbors committed to leveraging arts for justice and equity, Skywatchers’ work emerges from the talents, wisdom, stories, and urgent concerns that animate ensemble members’ lives. Bluethenthal’s community engaged practice also produced ANDARES, a durational collaboration with survivors of the Salvadoran civil war, contributing to the historical memory movement of that country. Among the honors Bluethenthal has received are the Guggenheim Fellowship, Artist Legacy Award from the SF Arts Commission, Award of Recognition from El Teatro Nacional de San Salvador, YBCA 100, SF Chronicle’s Best of 2001, SF Weekly’s Black Box, the SF Bay Guardian’s Goldie Award for Achievement in Dance, and the Rhinette Award for Choreography from Theatre Rhinoceros.
Rabbi Nancy E. Epstein, clinical professor in the Department of Community Health and Prevention, is an award-winning teacher and has served on the Drexel faculty since 2000. She received Drexel University’s Barbara G. Hornum Award for Teaching Excellence and Pedagogical Innovation in 2017 and is a four-time winner of the Dornsife School of Public Health’s Golden Apple Teaching Excellence Award. Professor Epstein’s current work is focused on arts and public health, and she led the initiative to create the Arts in Public Health minor at the Dornsife School of Public Health. She is a trained public policy mediator and studied systems-centered training (SCT) with Yvonne Agazarian. In 2006, Professor Epstein was ordained a rabbi by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
Sadie Shaw was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, and earned her BFA in Art & Visual Culture Education from the University of Arizona in 2019. Sadie is an artist, art educator, oral historian, community organizer and Governing Board Member of the Tucson Unified School District. Her studio practice, community advocacy and political activism have merged into a sociopolitical platform that challenges institutional racism, underlying cultural inequities and the systems and policies that perpetuate these conditions. Her art practice of digital, print and media-based installations echo her drive for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. She applies this same energy while advocating for the arts, neighborhoods, and the people of Tucson.
Disclosures: The planners, reviewers, and authors have no declared conflicts of interest.
