By Lauren Cenac, BA
I thoroughly enjoyed attending the Community Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) conference May 11-14, in New Orleans. The focus of the sessions at the CCPH conference ranged from environmental justice, to community based participatory research, to the medical humanities and beyond. It was interesting to view public health through these different interdisciplinary lenses. As a lifelong resident of Louisiana, I appreciated the emphasis on environmental justice throughout the conference. From Hurricane Katrina, to the BP oil spill, to the vanishing coastline, to the Dead Zone, to the chemical corridor, to the sinkhole in Assumption Parish, environmental issues are a constant struggle for the people of Louisiana, especially because these disasters typically affect a disproportionate share of racial and ethnic minorities, such as African-American, Vietnamese-American, and Native American populations. Not only do these environmental disasters affect public health, but with each occurrence, the people of Louisiana also lose part of our history and our heritage.
Related, many of the sessions focused on an interdisciplinary field called the medical humanities, which integrates artistic expression and health through history, theater, music, dance, and other liberal arts. One organization, called Imagining America, focuses on community-campus partnerships that utilize the arts to inspire civic engagement in youths. These projects are participatory, allowing the program audience to be actively engaged throughout the project’s inception and implementation, instead of merely being passive participants. Often these programs incorporate the target audience’s self-identified culture, history, and narratives in order to foster their creativity as well as their health and well-being. Through empowerment and engagement, community members, rather than outside entities, are able to sustain their own programs and achieve the goals they set for themselves. This type of participatory art is useful for communities in Louisiana. It can allow us to not only document our history and heritage, but to also envision our future, inspire change, and develop healthy communities through civic engagement.
Lauren Cenac is a second-year MPH student and a scholar in the Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health at Tulane. She plans to graduate in August 2016 from the Department of Global Community Health and Behavioral Sciences with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. Her interests include prenatal and postpartum care, breastfeeding, and health communication, policy, and research.
