Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Where the museum acknowledges the present and future of public health is in its innovative K-12 public health educational programs, including an annual Disease Detective Camp and an online summer course that both create opportunities for students to study how diseases spread.The museum also features interactive worksheets at multiple grade levels, from scavenger hunts to critical thinking quizzes.These worksheets are complemented by STEM lessons that the museum provides online for educators and students on epidemiology, the scientific method, and the design process.This interest in youth involvement in public health is echoed in the museum's mini exhibit on graphic designs targeting kids for COVID-19 vaccinations as part of its "campaign to build vaccine confidence."The exhibit features organizations across the country dedicated to creating art focused on COVID-19 resilience, including South Dakota's Barn Quilt Project that used cross-cultural quilting traditions to encourage locals to share stories about their COVID experiences.These artist coalitions feature numerous artists of color seeking to spread public health awareness to their own communities in visual styles that move beyond the CDC's use of, at times, shame or fear-driven public health campaigns.Massachusetts's Trust Transfer Project, which has worked with 150 artists and 75 faith organizations to promote vaccine confidence, features paintings by and for Latinx and African American New Englanders, including a scene in a Black barbershop, as part of their "hope to heal" campaign.These artistic creations that blend science, politics, art, and personal experiences demonstrate wide interest in creative approaches to public health that center community-building.Perhaps the younger generations that the CDC is seeking to recruit will take a greater role in shaping the CDC Museum to tell more vivid and interactive stories linking America's past role in public health to contemporary experiences and imagined futures for this important field.
Source: The Public Historian
Author: E. C. Thompson
Language: English
Subfield: Museology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4385455668