Everyone’s NOT Doing It:  A Visual Approach to Prevention of Non-Medical Use of Prescription Medication on College Campuses

I was part of the prestigious CH Foundation, Arts in Medicine Grant awarded in October 2018. I worked as research assistant and lead designer under Carla Tedeschi (Assistant Professor/Graphic Design Coordinator, Texas Tech University) and alongside Stacy Elko (Associate Professor of Printmaking, Texas Tech University) and Justin Keene (Assistant Professor, Journalism & Creative Media Industries) in producing visual imagery that was used to test a biopsychological model on a series of posters showing anti-NUPM messages (non-medical use of prescription medication).

The goal of the project was to shed light on the opiod crisis while showing students that not everyone is using non-prescription medication.

Our target audience was college students, specifically on the Texas Tech campus, so the people in the illustrations reflect the age of our demographic and the activities they take part in.

Conceptually, we wanted to show how opiods not only become part of the user, much like patterns on clothing, but create distance between other students who do not use prescription drugs recreationally.

During the first round of testing, student volunteers were shown  posters (4 with positive imagery / 4 with negative imagery) without visual drug cues. The second round of testing incorporated visual drug cues in the 4 positive / 4 negative posters.