Disseminating Health and Medical Education Through Fiction

• In Event: 31.078 - Social Fictions: Creative Research for Social Change

Abstract

Objectives
As an academic, I have been trained to rely on peer-reviewed scientific journal articles as the primary mode of knowledge transmission in my discipline. Yet too often, journal writing is inaccessible to the public: most people do not have access to academic libraries, let alone the difficulty of even finding appropriate articles. Journal writing is often jargonistic and verbose. In response, many scholars have turned to alternate forms of enquiry and representation, through qualitative and other arts-based research, in order to reach a variety of audiences. The purpose of this presentation is to share my process of translating both academic and professional public health experience into fiction as a mode of representation. I also discuss the use of fiction in health education through an analysis of student responses to this work in the classroom setting.

Theoretical framework
Many scholars have turned to alternate forms of representation, through arts-based research, in order to reach a variety of audiences. I draw on the emerging literature on ABR (Leavy 2009; Canhmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008) to ground this project.

Methods
I will discuss how I used fiction to represent ethnographic data and the scientific literature from sociology, medical, public health, and emergency management. In this presentation, I share my process of translating both academic and professional public health experience into fiction. My book, October Birds: A Novel about Pandemic Influenza, Infection Control, and First Responders (Gullion, 2014), was born in the overlapping space between science and art, with an eye towards representation to a broad audience. October Birds is grounded in real-life public health practice, as well as sociological, nursing, and emergency management discourses.

Data sources
Formerly Chief Epidemiologist for one of the largest health departments in Texas, I had significant knowledge that would be helpful to the public in the case of a virulent infectious disease outbreak. While health education campaigns are one way to inform people, here I use fiction (the novel) as an educational platform. Situations in the narrative are what one would expect to find in a real outbreak. The characters are health and emergency response professionals who must cope with a growing disaster. Through storytelling, the reader learns what actually happens in these sorts of scenarios, and finds that the real work is much different from what they may know from TV or movies. I will also discuss some of the results I've had from using October Birds as a text in one of my classes, Sociology of the Apocalypse, and demonstrate how students respond to this format.

Results
Using the novel-as-pedagogy moves academic knowledge into the public and educational realm and offers new audiences for dissemination. I present student responses to this work to illustrate the potential impact of fiction as a research tool.

Scholarly significance
By highlighting the process of fiction as research method, this presentation offers methodological tools to the audience for use in their own work.

Author

• Jessica Smartt Gullion, Texas Woman's University