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Contact: Jennifer Coffman
DALLAS COUNTY MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENT NAMED WINNER IN STATEWIDE HEALTH PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION
Abigail Todd, a DallasCounty middle school student, was named the winner and given the top prize for her work in a statewide health photography competition called Photovoice Missouri. Two other DallasCounty middle school students, Emilee Todd and Zach Vajda, were named Photovoice Missouri finalists. The three students, led byteachers Ruth Harris and Matt Neal, traveled to an awards ceremony in Columbia, Mo., on Friday, April 13, where they were honored for their achievements throughout the school year on the Photovoice Missouri project.
More than 20 students were honored as finalists from the seven participating Missouri counties. These finalists attended Friday’s ceremony with their parents and teachers, Photovoice Missouri staff and leaders from Missouri’s Healthy Lifestyles Initiative. Todd was given an iPad Two as the top prize winner.
The event also featured a photography display of all the finalists’ work, which was judgedby how well a photo and caption illustrated the Photovoice method, Healthy Lifestyle Initiative ideals as well as the photograph itself.
The main goal of Photovoice Missouriis to encourage students to raise awareness about how their communities are supporting healthy eating and opportunities for physical activity by taking photographs of what they see in their everyday lives. Theirphotographs show examples of ways the community supports positive lifestyle behaviors as well as gaps or areas where community improvement is needed.
“From everything we’ve heard from the teachers and the students involved in this project it’s been an eye-opening experience,” said Jon Stemmle, co-organizer of Photovoice Missouri and director of the HealthCommunicationResearchCenter at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Our goal going in was to introduce the students to a way to get their thoughts and concerns about the health of their communities heard. Based on what we’ve seen, I believe that’s happened and it’s created a dialogue that we hope will continue.”
The concept of Photovoice has been around for nearly 20 years, and is most often used in the field of community development, public health, and education to combine photography with grassroots social action. Participants are asked to represent their community or point of view through photos, videos or slideshows. Each participant develops a brief narrative to go with each of their visual presentations. They also discuss one another’s work and coordinate outreach or other action aimed at promoting tangible change within their community.
All of the students’pictures can be seen on Flickr, a photography sharing website, allowing the residents of DallasCounty and the general public tolook through the photos and comment on them. Student work from middle and high schools in each of the other seven participating Missouricounties - Mercer, Ralls, Shelby, St. Louis, Lafayette and Dent- can also be seen on this site (
Photovoice Missouri is supported by Missouri’s Healthy Lifestyle Initiative (HLI), assisted by the Health Communications Research Center (HCRC) at the Missouri School of Journalism.
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About HLI: The University of Missouri Extension Healthy Lifestyle InitiativehelpsMissouricommunities develop and implement plans that focus on policy and environmental changes to support healthy lifestyles within their community. In each community, HLI engages a broad spectrum of community members, governmental officials, local farm and food groups, local schools and churches and others to develop and carry out plans to increase the availability of healthy, affordable, locally produced food and safe, accessible physical activity. Each plan is created and implemented toaddress specific factors contributing to obesity, and sedentary lifestyles, and to support positive environmental changes that impact lifelong health. For more information visit
About the HCRC:The HealthCommunicationResearchCenter operates under the auspices of the Missouri School of Journalism. The HCRC's primary mission is to foster research to improve communication between the health care community and the public. The Center capitalizes on the University of Missouri's strengths in health care outreach, education and prevention and provides support to researchers conducting pilot studies and developing proposals for further extramural funding. For more information visit