HIV/AIDS Video to Screen at APHA Conference

Description: Zablocki VA Women's Health PACT (Patient Aligned Care Team includes the MD's, NP, RN, LPN, social worker, PharmD and medical secretary) undertook a pilot study to increase HIV testing among women clinic patients.

About the Project

This animated layered painting is the result of a 3-month design collaboration between PhD Design students, Amanda Geppert and Cornelia Bailey at Chicago’s IIT Institute Design and Kathryn Havens, the physician director of the Women’s Health Pact team at the Zablocki VA in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The design challenge: How to integrate routine HIV testing in VA Women’s Health Clinics using the Patient Aligned Care Teams (PACT) model.

The video will be screened in November as part of the 141st APHA Annual Meeting & Exposition which attracts more than 13,000 national and international physicians, administrators, nurses, educators, researchers, epidemiologists, and related health specialists. 

The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the oldest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world and has been working to improve public health since 1872. The Association aims to protect all Americans, their families and their communities from preventable, serious health threats and strives to assure community-based health promotion and disease prevention activities and preventive health services are universally accessible in the United States. APHA represents a broad array of health professionals and others who care about their own health and the health of their communities.

The PACT team was fortunate to have design researchers who helped to identify key elements for diffusion of our results.

The Zablocki Milwaukee VA Women's health team in collaboration with the IIT Institute of Design team sought to increase HIV testing among women veterans.

Together they identified a relatively simple process change in workflow wherein the LPN obtains consent for HIV testing at the same time that standard panels for cholesterol, blood sugar are offered, thus decreasing the stigma traditionally associated with HIV testing.

This process change ensures that patients are consistently offered the test, an important factor for women who may be infected with HIV but have no discernable high-risk behavior, since her risk may be related to her partner's behavior and not her own.

Early detection of HIV means effective treatment as a chronic disease.

Design methods were applied vigorously, not only for data collection, but also for intentional team building. The integration of design methods and medicine not only led to the creation of an impactful video solution but also to a short, simple and compelling way to disseminate findings with other VA medical providers.

Since its completion, the video has been placed on the national HIV VA site.

The story and video was presented to VA national champions throughout the entire country for implementation by other PACT teams.

PopTech Sparks of Brilliance

This year's conference focused on creativity as an important ingredient for community and survival.

“Creativity is the essence of our humanity, the great enricher of our lived experience, and the key to our shared resilience.”

During the event, I will be posted some behind-the-scenes photos and video for those of you interested in the gear and techniques I use to create paintings and posters live during each presenter’s talk, ranging in length from 5 - 20 minutes each.

There are upwards of 30 presentations in 2 days, so this is my annual creativity marathon.

More on our Facebook Page (like us, puleez!): https://www.facebook.com/ChimpLearnGood

Digital archive of PopTech Art: http://www.alphachimp.com/poptech-art/

On the airplane from Nashville to Maine, I realized that this is the one consistent annual thing I have participated in over the last decade.

I have spent every other major holiday and birthday in a different place around the world, but every third weekend in October, I have been here in Camden, Maine.

Crazy.

So I asked myself, why do I return each year?

The answer: This is my tribe.

And it is damn important to have one of those.

Find A Tribe, Save Your Sanity

As an artsy kid growing up in a part of the world obsessed with college football (Knoxville, Tennessee) I felt kind of out-of-place.

As an artist working in the corporate world and healthcare, I was usually singled out as “One of Those Creative Types”.

But here at PopTech, I am in a crowd of, what Andrew Zolli describes as “passionate weirdos”.

I spent a week before the conference with some of the emerging leaders in the field of Passionate Weirdism, known as the PopTech Fellows.

As an example, here are the job descriptions of some of the folks sitting at my lunch table…

— a synthetic biologist/artist
— a social learning tech guru
— a conservationist architect
— a war crimes investigator (and employee of George Clooney)
— two solar power gearheads
— a primatologist psychologist studying morality, and...
— a neuroscientist watching creativity happen inside the brain.

Brilliant. Amazing. And very human. All of them.

So, who is your tribe? What group challenges you, supports you, gives you energy and gives you rest from the grind of dailiness?

I sincerely hope you get with your tribe soon and get recharged.

After all, being connected with passionate weirdos and doing good work with good people, well... it is what ignites the sparks of brilliance within us!

~ Peter Durand