This whiteboard animation was commissioned by Professor Erina L. Farrell (MacGeorge) and Dr David L. Brinker at Penn State, explaining the urgent public health problem of antibiotic resistance: how overusing antibiotics breeds resistant bacteria, and why that matters for all of us. The brief was to make a complex, easily-ignored risk feel clear and relevant to a general audience.

What makes this project special to me is that the animation was tested, and it worked. It was built as a research instrument, designed using the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model, and then formally evaluated in published studies. In a national study of 1,000 people, the team found the animated video effectively convinced viewers that antibiotic use carries real risks and prompted them to want to seek out more information, and it performed on a par with a video produced by the CDC. The underlying research was published in the Journal of Health Communication and in Science Communication (2020).

This was an early collaboration with the team I’d go on to work with again on a larger project, the provider communication series for the same antibiotic stewardship research lab. Seeing an animation treated as a measured intervention, and shown to shift how people think about a genuine health risk, is exactly the kind of evidence-based impact I hope this work can have. Turning rigorous research into something a general audience can absorb and act on is the heart of my animation work with academics and researchers.

If you’re a researcher, university or organisation working on public health, behaviour change or science communication and you’d like to turn your research into animation, I’d love to hear from you. Get in touch.