SaludeArte

  • The Opportunity

    When I joined the Pima County Health Department in September 2021, I was immediately tasked with developing the County’s first public art/public health program using about ~1% of all major COVID-19 funding. Aimed at creating a “culture of health,” and designed with the understanding that “health happens everywhere,” I grew SaludArte from a nearly $300,000 project to an over $500,000 program, and built the partnership with the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona that made the program come to life. I was given the latitude to develop SaludArte from the ground up, and the challenge of bringing together 4 discrete federal funding streams and multiple community partnerships to do so.

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  • The solution

    Now, as an independent contractor working directly with the Arts Foundation, I have had the opportunity to see the program through to the end, planning and executing 5 community events (one in each supervisory district) to celebrate the art that was co-created by each community committee and their selected artists. By centering the community members at every step of the process - including developing community-informed objectives and KPI’s - I continue to model how government agencies and nonprofits may embrace and uplift the praxis of, “nothing about us, without us.”

    Community Co-Design

  • The outcome

    Under construction - Coming soon!

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Some achievements during my time include:

  • Designing equitable community participant compensation and having that model approved at the County and Federal-funder levels. Community members were compensated at a rate of $100 per 1-2 hour meeting and had the opportunity to earn more incentives up to the tax reporting threshold of $599 (so as not to impact eligibility for social services and benefits).

  • Working with community member participants to define County-wide AND district-specific goals for the Celebrate SaludArte events, and then defining and achieving community KPI’s (key performance indicators).

  • Demonstrably improving community members and artists’ health literacy, including their understanding of where and how to access resources, and increasing their confidence in doing so.

  • Being invited to present on SaludArte, both as a team at the 2023 Grantmakers in the Arts conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico AND as an individual at the 31st Annual Arizona Immunization Conference taking place in Phoenix in April, 2024.

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Advancing Health Literacy