Art to Communicate AMR: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
In celebration of World Antimicrobial Awareness Week (WAAW) on 18 – 24 November 2022, SEAOHUN hosted its 3rd Annual Regional Student Competition with the theme of “Art to Communicate Antimicrobial Resistance”, in partnership with USAID One Health Workforce – Next Generation (OHW-NG) consortium, Zoetis and Pfizer. In this online art competition, undergraduate students from SEAOHUN member countries, entered as two member teams with the supervision of one faculty mentor to create digital and/or non-digital image art to communicate to non-scientific communities about the importance of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). Being the silent pandemic of this era and responsible for more than 700,000 deaths globally every year, the public needs to be more educated about AMR. Raising awareness with a touch of creativity, such as communication using Art is a great way to spread the awareness of AMR among the communities.
“Using Art is such amazing and fun idea to raise AMR awareness in creative way. The webinar also provided the knowledge and information of AMR and tips for drawing. I learned that messages conveyed in the form of art can educate the non-scientific community effectively and easily. Through this competition, I gained a lot of new experiences by working as a team, generating scientific ideas and converting into artwork.” – Rachana Dorn, Whale Team, Cambodia
The competition was launched on 21st September 2022 and followed by a webinar titled “Communicating the Impact of AMR through Art” on 26th September 2022. The webinar was joined by interested students. The speakers from OHW-NG shared the overview of AMR and know-hows of science communications in the form of art. 47 teams (129 participants) from 7 SEAOHUN member countries participated in the competition: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam with a total submission of 58 art pieces.
The final winners’ art pieces were featured in SEAOHUN social media during WAAW and via public voting, non-digital art winning team from Vietnam “TBUMP One Health Club” won the Public Pick Award with 502 votes within 24 hours.
Student teams participated in this year’s competition proved that “A picture is worth a thousand words” by demonstrating their ability to create art in informative and engaging ways to educate the community. The competition enabled regional students to upgrade their technical knowledge and creative skills to communicate with the public regarding One Health issues while strengthening the networking and teamwork through collaboration. These accomplishments will foster the young professionals from multidisciplinary backgrounds to learn and apply the One Health concept to stimulate good practices in the communities. SEAOHUN conveys heartfelt appreciation to our partners USAID, Zoetis and Pfizer for their valuable contribution for the success of SEAOHUN 2022 Regional Student Competition.
“The competition was such a unique approach to spread awareness by creativity. It was never easy to educate people about health issues by just telling information. Art is a good way to attract people in giving the health messages where they can absorb the information easily. Public health professionals should also think about more flexible and creative ideas in spreading health education and awareness to the community.”– Abdul Latiff Bin Sabri, Kaizen Team, Malaysia
