Using the Arts and Health Literacy to Improve Household Hygiene in a shantytown in Lima, Perú

The arts can be a powerful strategy to promote healthy minds and bodies. Through the arts we can communicate multiple messages that promote healthy behaviors and ultimately health outcomes to individuals and communities. Health literacy allows the public and personnel working in all health-related contexts to find, understand, evaluate, communicate, and use information to make informed decisions. Research shows that health literacy is a predictor of overall health status. Using the arts and health literacy to advance household hygiene is a multi-layered, innovative, culturally and linguistically appropriate approach to improving public health. This project utilizes the arts and health literacy as a conceptual framework to improve household hygiene in a shantytown – pueblos jóvenes – in Lima, Perú. It combines the arts - music, dance, and theater - with the best practices of health literacy to prevent morbidity through improved hygiene. In this project, community members themselves will identify and adopt hygiene behaviors that have a demonstrable impact on health. In partnership with local organizations in Perú, this project introduces and exchanges information by adapting culturally familiar narratives, songs, stories, and other materials to protect and improve individual and community health. During artistic performances, the community is directly engaged in selecting hygiene-related behaviors for adoption. Research on the impact of this intervention will be conducted using a participatory approach that involves quantitative and qualitative methods.