Co-locating art and health: engaging civil society to create an enabling environment to respond to HIV in Indonesia

Abstract

Background This paper will report on the successful co-location of a community-based arts and sexual health project that aimed to engage, educate and create testing, treatment and care pathways at a co-located mobile sexual health clinic and community-controlled art gallery in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Methods: Mixed methods were used to evaluate the project, including a visitor (n = 1181) and artist (n = 85) log book, a convenience audience survey (n = 231), and qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 13) with artists and audience to explore the effect of arts-based activities on access to sexual health information and services, and stigma and discrimination. Results: In total, 85 artists curated five separate exhibitions that were attended by 1181 people, of which 62% were aged ≤24 years. Gallery attendance improved awareness and participatory and interactive engagement with sexual health information through a medium described as interesting, fun, cool, and unique. The co-located clinic facilitated informal pathways to sexual health services, including HIV/AIDS testing, treatment, and care. Importantly, the project created shared understandings and empathy that challenged stereotypes and myths, reducing stigmatising beliefs and practices. Conclusions: Arts-based programs are transformative and can be effectively implemented, replicated and scaled up in low-resource settings to create awareness and initiate for HIV prevention, testing, treatment, and care. Art-based health programs engages people in their communities, mobilises civil society, builds enabling environments to reduce stigma and discrimination and improves access to testing and prevention; essential features needed to end AIDS in Indonesia (and the Southeast Asia region) while improving the lives of those most vulnerable to infection.

Cancer and the Politics of Care

“…The moral stigma projected at women affected by cervical cancer can be differentiated from the fear surrounding other prominent cancers in Indonesia, such as breast and lung cancer. While cancers in general are feared in the popular imaginary, both because they often lead to death and because their treatment is understood to be brutal (Sunarsih et al 2018), other cancers do not immediately attract moral condemnation because they are not associated with immorality and promiscuity; 2 only HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases share this level of moral stigma (Newland et al 2021;Waluyo et al 2015;Waluyo, Nurachmah and Rosakawati 2006). The discrepancy in stigma between cervical cancer and other cancers drives inequalities between different cancers, in terms of the degree of care afforded to women and their associated social suffering.…”

Cancer and the Politics of Care

“…The moral stigma projected at women affected by cervical cancer can be differentiated from the fear surrounding other prominent cancers in Indonesia, such as breast and lung cancer. While cancers in general are feared in the popular imaginary, both because they often lead to death and because their treatment is understood to be brutal (Sunarsih et al 2018), other cancers do not immediately attract moral condemnation because they are not associated with immorality and promiscuity; 2 only HIV and other sexually transmissible diseases share this level of moral stigma (Newland et al 2021;Waluyo et al 2015;Waluyo, Nurachmah and Rosakawati 2006). The discrepancy in stigma between cervical cancer and other cancers drives inequalities between different cancers, in terms of the degree of care afforded to women and their associated social suffering.…”