Es Tiempo: Using Design in Advocacy
Design is a powerful force in advocating and promoting public health change. It can save people’s lives! Given alarmingly high rates of cervical cancer among Latinas in Los Angeles, there was an urgency to intervene effectively in order to save women’s lives. Designmatters students and faculty responded to this challenge by creating Es Tiempo, with researchers from the University of Southern California. Es Tiempo is a stunningly beautiful and innovative Spanish/English public education campaign that uses the annual bloom of the purple jacaranda tree in Los Angeles to advocate for regular cervical cancer screening. In 2015, the campaign teamed up with the Los Angeles Office of Women’s health and local clinics to pilot test in Boyle Heights, in-clinic and outdoor media components. Outdoor media was placed in surrounding streets of Clínica Monseñor Oscar Romero and consisted of billboards, bus benches, and light post banners. Clínica displayed posters and mailed 350 postcards to Latina patients that were not up to date on Pap screenings. The campaign was very well received with 64% of women that had been out of compliance, completing a Pap test in the campaign period. Innovatively designed materials can impact the most vulnerable populations.
Es Tiempo is a design tool for advocacy. It empowers and inspires women to make a difference in their own lives and that of their family and community. “Es Tiempo” – It’s time to make cervical cancer a “disease of the past”.
Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati, PhD, MPH
Professor in Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of USC
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Dr. Lourdes Baezconde-Garbanati is a tenured Professor in Preventive Medicine and Director of the Center for Health Equity in the Americas at the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. She researches development and testing of culturally grounded and in-language communication and interventions with the goal of correcting health disparities in vulnerable populations. Her work on the role of culture as a social determinant of health and in reducing disparities has received multiple local, national and international awards, including an American Public Health Association Latino Caucus Most Distinguished Career Award. Her work appears in highly prestigious scientific journals and in multimedia outlets
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