Abstract
Emerging first as a GenEd final project idea based on my love of art and youth development, Bluey’s Big Worries and Professor Sue Goldie have completely transformed how I see policy work, problem-solving, and care. Inspired by the growing mental health epidemic, this book was created to provide children with the space and vocabulary to identify with Bluey, understand and reflect on their own emotions and worries, and learn how to express what they’re feeling. This final project dared us to dream big and to be bold, thoughtful, and intentional – to make something achievable that could make a difference, not limited by conventional forms of change-making. From this inspiration, each brush stroke, illustrative sequence, and storyboard is driven by an analytical understanding of the problem, my years of work in the Cambridge Afterschool Program (CASP), and a shared love for creation, color, and discussion. I learned that bright colors, drawing outside of the lines, and just creating are the first steps to any problem-solving and challenge us to think in ways we never could have imagined before. And it is from this class that I have learned so much more about why I want to go into medicine and more specifically pediatrics, rooted in creating toolkits, shared language, and a caring space for the young people I work with.
Submission
Big Worries and Big Ideas
“Deep in the sea lives a fish named Bluey…” the story began. Floating in a sea of light blue watercolor brushstrokes and outlined in coarse black penmarks, this iridescent blue fish came to life. Page by page in Bluey’s Big Worries, Bluey’s story unfolded within this colorful sea of watercolor. With pursed lips, curious eyes, and a worrisome, nagging shadow, Bluey navigated feelings of anxiety, doubt, and fear, learning new ways to work through his worries and a vocabulary to describe them. As a reader flips through, they too can place themselves within this story to explore their own big feelings, worries, and coping mechanisms in a world of color and possibility amidst a rising tide of mental health concerns.
Anxiety disorders are a serious and growing problem for children globally, commonly presented as intense feelings of worry and fear. Anxiety rates have almost doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic due to mass isolation, fear, uncertainty, and school closures all of which interrupted critical periods of development and socialization for children (Racine et al. 2021) and is a major public health concern as it interferes with daily functioning and developmental milestones and impacts families and communities (Ghandour et al. 2019). As a critical policy target, various interventions are currently being implemented to tackle this growing issue including increased access to appropriate treatments and care providers, improved mental health education and discourse, and the construction of scaffolded-support networks. Introducing mental health and anxiety into conversation with children in an informal and educational way has been suggested to improve mental health literacy and reduce stigma for both children and caretakers (Lowe, D. 2009; USDE 2021). Thus Bluey’s Big Worries was created to provide children with the space and vocabulary to identify with Bluey, understand and reflect on their own emotions and worries, and learn how to express what they are feeling.
Before this class, while I was witnessing the growing rates of childhood anxiety every week in the Cambridge Afterschool Program (CASP), I lacked the tools and knowledge to truly understand and analyze this problem. It was not until my sophomore year that I was given the space and opportunity to tackle children’s mental health as a final project for GenEd 1063 World health: Challenges and Opportunities with Professor Sue Goldie where I learned how to analyze, present, and intervene in an intentional and impactful way. Emerging first as a project idea based on my love of art and young people, coupled with my apprehension to write another long paper, this project transformed the way I see change-making. Rather than big problems necessitating paralyzingly big solutions, I learned that sometimes the simplest ideas–here found within CASP’s young people’s love for story-telling, crafts, and sea animals–can be special, fun, and impactful. In this way, policy and interventions can and must be rooted in community voice and need, knowing that although no one intervention can fix everything, change is made through this collaboration and shared imagination. The purpose of this final project was to create a specific, achievable deliverable for a global health problem, such as a public service announcement, microsite, policy brief, podcast, or more, to begin to tackle these big problems in a data-driven, intentional way. As the culmination of a semester of analyzing global health issues, metrics, and policy, this class dared us to dream big and be bold, and to not be limited by conventional policy briefs or other forms of change-making.
As such, each brush stroke, illustrative sequence, and storyboard is infused with meaning, purpose, and care – driven by an analytical understanding of the problem, my years of work in CASP, and a shared love for creation, color, and discussion. And now, with the support of Professor Sue Goldie and the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI) team, Bluey has become so much more than a final project and is currently becoming part of a multi-book series with accompanying resource packs and curriculum designed for young people, families, and educators to bring mental health into everyday discussion. Today, Bluey is now a part of a dynamic ecosystem of friends with different struggles and journeys with anxiety, and these stories make up a core component of my theory of change. With the support of Professor Goldie and the GHELI team, what started as a creative final project meant to add some color and liveliness to my finals, has been completely transformed into a resource that combines my passions for art, young people, and mental health in an impactful way and has shown me the power of radical imagination and dreaming.
This course empowers students to tackle the most pressing global challenges rooted in a love of bright colors and the belief in creation with purpose. In this way and building on our own projects, another classmate and I were given the opportunity to partner together to create a workshop series for the next year’s students to support them in thinking creatively and dreaming boldly for their final projects. In these workshops, we created a space to brainstorm different policy and project ideas and to learn technical skills through rotations through story-boarding, sketching, podcasting, and multimedia stations. These workshops were meant to make project ideas for big problems feel accessible, tangible, and most importantly fun – and it is in these special spaces and with Professor Goldie’s support that I really see and deeply believe in the power of radical imagination. This class taught us that there are countless ways to address big problems; we just have to be brave enough to care and to try, rooted in a concrete understanding of the problem and potential solutions. And here I learned that bright colors, drawing outside of the lines, and just creating are the first steps to any problem-solving and challenge us to think in ways we never could have imagined before. I found that art and care for young people can coexist with and complement thoughtful approaches to medicine and public health to create tangible impacts, rather than being confined only to the standardized text of policy briefs. And it is from this class that I have learned so much more about why I want to go into medicine and more specifically pediatrics, rooted in creating toolkits, shared language, and a caring space for the young people I work with. This class has completely changed how I approach problem solving inspired by my newfound belief that big problems can have many small, impactful interventions, and we should not be afraid to collaborate, color outside of the lines, and think creatively.
Works Cited
Ghandour, Reem M., Laura J. Sherman, Catherine J. Vladutiu, Mir M. Ali, Sean E. Lynch, Rebecca H. Bitsko, and Stephen J. Blumberg. 2019. “Prevalence and Treatment of Depression, Anxiety, and Conduct Problems in US Children.” The Journal of Pediatrics 206 (March): 256-267.e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2018.09.021.
Lowe, D. F. (2009). Helping Children Cope through Literature. Forum on Public Policy Online. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ864819.pdf
Racine, Nicole, Brae Anne McArthur, Jessica E. Cooke, Rachel Eirich, Jenney Zhu, and Sheri Madigan. 2021. “Global Prevalence of Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Children and Adolescents During COVID-19: A Meta-Analysis.” JAMA Pediatrics 175 (11): 1142–50. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.2482.
U.S. Department of Education. (USDE). Supporting Child and Student Social, Emotional, Behavioral, and Mental Health Needs. 2021. https://www2.ed.gov/documents/students/supporting-child-student-social-emotional-behavioral-mental-health.pdf