Visual arts faculty contribute expertise to CDC-funded public health campaign
Two College of Architecture, Arts, and Design faculty are part of an $8.5 million Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant awarded to the City of New Orleans
Mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, and other vectors, or blood-feeding disease carriers, are a public health threat. As climate change creates conditions more favorable to the spread of certain zoonotic diseases, including mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, the dangers increase each year.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has awarded $8.5 million over five years to the City of New Orleans' Mosquito, Termite, and Rodent Control Board to increase vector management and public awareness of vector-borne diseases in the Gulf South. Two faculty from the Virginia Tech School of Visual Arts in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Design are contributing their expertise to help them spread the message.
Rachel Lin Weaver, associate professor of creative technologies, was working in Louisiana in spring 2023 on an artistic project about mosquitoes and climate crisis in the Gulf South when she met city employees at the New Orleans Mosquito, Rodent, and Termite Control Board. With a background in documentary film around community, memory, ecology, and resilience, Weaver has expertise that was a perfect fit for the city’s proposal to the CDC.
“The team saw a lot of need for media and visual interpretation of the work they’re doing and the information that they need to communicate, so that led to me being invited to join their grant,” said Weaver.
The proposal led to the development of the Gulf South VECTOR, or Vector Educational Center for Training, Outreach, and Resources, project.
“My focus at this point is storytelling and presenting the information in a way that can be accessed and understood by a large constituency,” said Weaver.
Weaver is working closely with Johnny Hall, a Blacksburg-based, Emmy award-winning filmmaker and content production director, to develop an informative series of documentary short films. Together, Weaver and Hall have visited sites with high-prevalence of disease vectors and interviewed experts who focus on vector control and the transmission of vector-borne illness as well as people whose lived experiences are impacted by these diseases.
“We interviewed somebody who survived mosquito-borne encephalitis who now has to take medication three times a day to prevent seizures,” said Weaver. “Film does a really great job directly connecting people to the stories of others and sparking empathy as well as curiosity about these complex subjects, which is another really important part of this project. We need people to care about these issues.”
As Weaver began the process of figuring out what stories needed to be told from a documentary standpoint, they also saw a need for field guides, graphics, and information that can be easily digested by a wide range of readers. Weaver reached out to colleague Rachael Paine, assistant professor of graphic design and human centered design at Virginia Tech.
Paine’s background is in health literacy and health communication as a graphic designer, experience that will inform the Gulf South VECTOR project as they create different communication pieces for target audiences.
“They’re communicating to many different audiences – people in the education realm, people in the government realm, students they want to recruit into the industry, pest control experts – so they needed somebody to help with the materials,” said Paine. “The goal is to really help provide accessibility to the communications that come out of the project.”
Paine, with assistance from graphic design senior Devina Bawa, is currently working on a branding guide for the project. The guide will establish a cohesive look and tone for the variety of communication pieces that different project partners will create. Paine also will train others from a design perspective, emphasizing readability and health literacy best practices.
“A visual designer controls how the reader engages with the information on the page and how inviting it is for somebody to actually progress through the different levels of content,” said Paine. “It’s important for a project like this where the information is super complex. We are going to provide the VECTOR team with some templates to help them on that path.”
The Gulf South VECTOR project brings together many different partners and fields to help establish new methods for vector control and information sharing that Weaver said hasn’t been done before. While the Gulf South region is the first target of this program, many other parts of the country face similar problems, including the spread of Zika, West Nile, and tick-borne diseases such as Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, and Rocky Mountain spotted fever here in Virginia. Weaver said their work could have a regional and then national impact.
“How do we adequately prepare as a society? There are big questions like that I’ve been thinking about as a result of having the opportunity to work on this project,” said Weaver. “I’m excited to leverage our skills for a project where documentary filmmaking and design can have such a positive impact on public health and societal wellbeing into the future.”
