Joint effort merges countries, arts and health sciences

Depending on whom you ask, the border separating Arizona and Mexico is 372.5 miles long.

But it could be as long as 378 miles or as short as 370 miles. One thing is certain, though: when it comes to education, there is no border.

Image

For more than 60 years, the University of Arizona has been part of the Arizona-Mexico Commission, an organization committed to binational collaboration to benefit our neighboring countries. The U of A also has a longstanding relationship with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the largest public university in Latin America and one of the world’s largest. The U of A is home to one of the Mexican university’s 15 global sites.

Recently, seven UNAM nursing students spent six months in Tucson, participating in classes and research as well as performing more than 140 hours of community service, including with the U of A Mobile Health Unit at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. 

“The unique global partnership is really a way of saying, ‘How do we open up the world and collaborate better on multiple levels?’” said Lisa Kiser, DNP, CNM, WHNP, a faculty advisor to the visiting students and an associate clinical professor in the School of Health Professions at the Zuckerman College of Public Health.

One way to improve teamwork is through the U of A Health and Arts Community Collaboratory. 

Beyond boundaries

The collaboratory is a unique program that crosses geographical borders and academic disciplines, bringing together international and local partners with U of A students and faculty from the health sciences and arts. It’s all in the name of improving lives and showing what it means to be well on both sides of the border. 

The collaboratory, known as HACC, was funded by a Hispanic Serving Institution Faculty Seed Grant and U of A Office of Research and Partnership Research Development Grant Program. In just one year, it launched a website and app; hosted exhibits in Tucson and Mexico featuring student photographs and narratives; held a book reading and reception for human rights advocate Dora Rodriguez who fled El Salvador and crossed the Sonoran Desert; and had cross-cultural exchanges of students and faculty. 

Image

“My hope is that HACC becomes a model that other institutions can learn from, one that shows — with real evidence — how arts-integrated health education can advance health equity in meaningful ways,” said Tarnia Newton, DNP, FNP-C, an associate clinical professor at the U of A College of Nursing who helped create the program.

The idea of bridging health and humanities has picked up steam in recent years. It’s a movement that makes sense, said Amy Kraehe, PhD, an associate vice president of Organizational Excellence and Impact at the U of A.

“Visual and performing arts spark empathy and challenge existing assumptions,” said Kraehe, who’s also a professor of art. “They provoke us to reconsider familiar ideas through a new lens. This is why the arts are crucial companions in health care education and community health dialogues.

“HACC humanizes health challenges, using photographic exhibitions and storytelling to shift from a strictly technical, disease-centric model of health to a person-centered approach to well-being that prioritizes compassion, respect for lived experience and self-awareness. This approach produces health care professionals who can balance high-tech, evidence-based practices with high-touch, community-engaged care.”

With that in mind, NURS/HSD 250, a course focusing on health equity, started in fall 2025 as a general education class so that students outside the health sciences could enroll, said Kiser, who taught the course. 

“The creative arts are part of healing, but they also have to be part of learning,” Kiser said. “It’s the one thing I wish I had when I went to nursing school, but there was that separation between hard sciences and art.”

It was NURS/HSD 250 students who created the photos and narratives used in the pop-up exhibits, including one at the U of A Center of Photography that attracted nearly 2,000 people. 

“Health equity is everyone’s problem,” Newton said. “All disciplines need to be part of the solution.”

Broadening horizons

As a junior in the U of A’s nursing program, Seara Pitton-Rocha said NURS/HSD 250 gave her the opportunity to dust off her artistic skills. As a kid, she gravitated toward painting and sketching. Her contribution to the exhibitions was a landscape photograph featuring a ray of sunshine highlighting a bridge and a little snowman with lush, grassy terrain alongside shabby, pockmarked pavement. 

Image

“To me, it was two sides of the same coin,” she said of the picture. “You can see the beauty or see the reality of how worn out it is. But they’re both connected. For one to exist, you need the other.

“In my narrative, I talked about how we have to work together to support each other, how we need to work together to be able to provide health care to both sides of the border. Every human life matters. I would never imagine treating someone differently based on their beliefs or where they’re from. If you need medical care, you deserve to have medical care.”

As a student who took the class only because she needed credits and didn’t know what to expect, the class turned out to be a profound experience, said Pitton-Rocha. Her parents are both Mexican, so she loved the opportunity to experience her family’s culture firsthand on trips to Mexico in Hermosillo and Guaymas. 

Cheryl Valdez, a second-year Master of Public Health student in the Zuckerman College of Public Health, served as an interpreter on the trips. Though she was born in California, she grew up in Sonora, Mexico. To her, the visits were a great cultural exchange of food and ideas that further brought home the idea that borders are more of a geographical construct.

“When you collaborate with another country, it shows how borders are just imaginary,” she said. “There’s only one world that exists.”