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This chapter describes the development and use of ArtScience-based activities incorporating multiple artistic languages, such as games, music and art workshops, science fiction dialogue circles, and production of materials for healthcare communication with teenagers and adults in socio-environmentally vulnerable areas with a high disease prevalence. These new ArtScience strategies and actions were used to address health awareness related to social, environmental, and biological determinants involved in the transmission of dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever by the Aedes aegypti mosquito in urban areas in Latin America, where traditional educational actions have not been effective. Images, sound, films, and texts on both the mosquito and the socio-environmental settings associated with the health care conditions were used for awareness raising. The participants produced photographs to stimulate the act of viewing through scientific and artistic perspectives; discussed texts; wrote narratives on health care; engaged in handicraft production; and composed songs. Participants also debated social inequalities and environmental problems directly related to disease carrier agents. We learned that a rich dialogue occurred between scientific and popular forms of knowledge, promoting citizenship. In conclusion, collaborative and creative solutions supported the process of empowering young people as multipliers for the control and prevention of diseases and for health awareness promotion.

Background Chagas Disease (CD) affects 6–7 million people worldwide and is related to poverty-promoting conditions. Chronic asymptomatic cases are mostly invisible to health systems. Aiming (1) to translate CD discoveries into education/information practices to raise alertness and empowerment of affected people; and (2) to perform an active search of CD cases, articulating intersectoral actions to improve the access of infected people to the local health service for the treatment of CD; our research group developed and tested under field conditions as innovative social technology: an itinerant education interdisciplinary setting named “Chagas Express XXI” (CE21). Methodology CE21 was created as an “imaginary train” with ~40 ArtScience workshops, games, laboratory activities and conversation circles. An entry/exit plus six activity modules combined associations of affected people, microscopic observations, One Health education, and wellness activities. CE21 was conceived as a social technology, since all the processes were co-created with CD patients and inter-sector local partners. Descriptive statistics showed quantitative data collected throughout the expeditions (CD knowledge, serological results). Qualitative data accessed the public perceptions about the education activities. Principal findings CE21 was exhibited in local educational institutions (schools, universities) in four cities, engaging 2,117 people that evaluated the 41 activities carried out. Citizens and health professionals enjoyed acquisition of information related to blood, parasites, vectors, reservoirs, environmental changes, and social determinants of CD. Further, local legacies of 600 participants volunteer for health promotion groups and CD associations, local empowerment groups to fight for better health conditions, and 05 mural paintings. We observed that 81% of the participants ignored the possibility of treating CD while 52% of the participants requested a blood test for CD showing seropositivity in 20% of them. Conclusions CE21 is a social technology potentially useful for health and science education and active search of asymptomatic CD chronic cases. Moreover, this technology may be adapted to understand and to cooperate in other potentially epidemic situations, especially NTDs related., Author summary In the last decade one important issue concerning Chagas Disease (CD) is the active engagement of CD affected persons (patients, families, friends, students, and health professionals) as protagonists of a global struggle against neglection. Since 2015 CD patients of Fiocruz-Rio de Janeiro were in close contact with our education research group, where they were able to develop ArtScience activities related to information, education, and self-consciousness. This work paved the way for the creation of the Rio Chagas Association in 2016. However, its members often requested opportunities to offer activities of this nature in their birthplaces, where their families still live in a situation of socioeconomic vulnerability and at risk of infection. To address this request, our group developed a social technology called “Chagas Express XXI” (CE21), an expedition that offered 41 practical ArtScience activities that were co-created and co-mediated by people affected by DC, researchers, and graduate students. We tested CE21 in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where 2,117 people filled out the participation forms. Among them, 1,100 adults requested the available serological test, and 20% were diagnosed with positive CD. These results support that CE21 could be used as a tool for active search of chronic asymptomatic cases. Further, 600 participants were registered to collaborate in health promotion nuclei to foster new associations of CD affected persons. Our study presents an innovative social technology to address prevention and health care for CD using non-formal learning and its corresponding educational resources. This education technology can be applied to other NTD by direct communication to people at risk of infection and/or affected in endemic areas. Science and health education are intimately related and the association with the art tools helps to improve knowledge communication to society.

Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to overcome complex problems in contemporaneity. Chagas disease challenges in Brazilian Amazon, implicates One Health interdisciplinary approaches and teams to integrate health of humans, animals and the environment, to foster earlier detection of this zoonotic disease and better prevention. We studied the interdisciplinary team, the logistic of its long term field work and the education processes emerging on a non-formal education environment of a Chagas disease Protocol conduced in Pará. An alarming situation: notified acute cases almost doubled in two years. Photographs were presented (iconographic approach) to qualitatively describe the experience of the interdisciplinary team. Five recommendations were proposed at the end of the study. Our observational study with the interdisciplinary team confirmed the conception that “in connecting the purity of science with the pragmatism of policy, the intangibles of trust, rapport, and even friendship can be more potent than logic and more compelling than evidence”. Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to overcome complex problems in contemporaneity. Chagas disease challenges in Brazilian Amazon, implicates One Health interdisciplinary approaches and teams to integrate health of humans, animals and the environment, to foster earlier detection of this zoonotic disease and better prevention. We studied the interdisciplinary team, the logistic of its long term field work and the education processes emerging on a non-formal education environment of a Chagas disease Protocol conduced in Pará. An alarming situation: notified acute cases almost doubled in two years. Photographs were presented (iconographic approach) to qualitatively describe the experience of the interdisciplinary team. Five recommendations were proposed at the end of the study. Our observational study with the interdisciplinary team confirmed the conception that “in connecting the purity of science with the pragmatism of policy, the intangibles of trust, rapport, and even friendship can be more potent than logic and more compelling than evidence”.