Bringing Care to Life
Animation highlights teaching points for newborn care
One important feature of our newborn care videos is the use of illustrations and brief animations that highlight key teaching points. When we began the post-production process for our first set of videos, we were fortunate to have Lorelei Pepi join our team. Lorelei is an international award-winning independent animator who now teaches at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Rhode Island School of Design.
Through this animation health workers are able to see and understand the journey of a gastric tube inside the newborn’s body. Making the invisible visible is an important instructional strategy employed by Global Health Media Project to help health workers learn.
Lorelei is now working on a series of images about referrals that will be used in several videos. When a baby is too sick to be cared for in the primary care setting, health workers should refer the baby to a higher-level facility.
Sometimes that is not an option due to many possible obstacles: no transport, no money, lack of trust in modern medical care, the impassable mountains in an Afghan winter, to name a few. Lorelei illustrates how to best care for the baby if there is no option to refer. She describes this in her blog:
This particular illustration will be part of a series of shots that visually demonstrate that the family needs to stay, that the mother needs to provide “kangaroo care” for the child, and that the care giver needs to be attentive with warmth (blankets) and medical needs. And of course, that the father is caring and attentive, too.
There are important things to consider in this sketch – head coverings for the women, long pants and sleeves for the man, the kangaroo care warp is snug, the baby is snug between the mother’s breasts, the blanket isn’t lifted too far off so that “keep the baby warm” is obvious, the thermometer, kidney dish with cloths and a second syringe indicating medical care, a syringe ready to use but not looking scary, and that the nurse is an older and thus experienced adult.