Pictured: Competition winner Chelsea Shotton (centre) and honourable mentions Bronte Mark (left) and Olivia Ashworth (right).
Jean Hailes for Women's Health and Queensland University of Technology have joined forces in a design partnership that offers students a chance to develop a portfolio of work around health prevention and promotion campaigns.
In 2018, more than 800 QUT students from the School of Design's first year 'Visual Communication' unit will be invited to apply their design skills to real-world health prevention briefs.
Already, 600 students have taken part in the competition, with a further 200 taking on the brief in this second half of the year. Competition winners will receive a certificate, a gift voucher of their choosing and an opportunity for Jean Hailes to showcase their work.
Jean Hailes' head of Education and Knowledge Exchange, Chris Enright, said one of the challenges for the organisation was developing health prevention messages that resonated with younger women.
"We were really keen and interested to work with students to get their take on what prevention and awareness messages they felt would work with their age group," Ms Enright said.
Students were asked to apply their skills to an overarching women's health prevention campaign, as well as individual prevention and awareness campaigns for major areas of concern for women's health. These major areas of focus include: Bone Health, Breast Health, Cardiovascular Health, Endometriosis, Fertility and Pregnancy, Health Checks, Healthy Living, Mental and Emotional Health, and Sex and Sexual Health.
"Working with organisations such as Jean Hailes provides us with an authentic and rich way to educate students," said Dr Jeremy Kerr, Senior Lecturer and Coordinator for the Visual Communication degree program at QUT. "They learn to undertake further research into women's health and how to apply their skills in brand identity, logo development and campaign design in meaningful ways."
Jean Hailes' Community Engagement Manager, Fiona Darling, said the first round of entries was "very impressive" and generated lots of discussion as the team selected a winner.
"We loved that the students were able to be so innovative and creative and really thought about how the communication could gain optimum exposure and maximum impact to help prevent critical health issues for Australian women," Ms Darling said.
The winner in the prevention and awareness campaign was Chelsea Shotton, whose campaign "The First Step" focused on raising awareness about endometriosis.
Bronte Mark with her "Let's Talk U" campaign and Olivia Ashworth with "iMatter" both received honourable mentions for their creative and clever submissions on uterine health and mental health respectively.
