Health Literacy in Graphic Medicine: Medical Comics and Graphic Pathologies

Abstract

Long ago a child left a dentist office with a comic book on the proper way to brush their teeth. Over time, so many have read comics telling tales of their favorite Marvel hero or what is next for Snoopy and his colleagues or the political scene depicted in a Doonesbury comic strip. Today comics and graphic novels with pictures that look like us center on health topics to get us through a pandemic, being a caring caregiver, eating properly and learning about climate change. It is cliché, but pictures can represent a thousand words, especially when the topics may be complicated, but the images are comfortable for the reader. This Health Literacy column will define graphic medicine with its comics and graphic pathograhics, the elements needed for these tools to create a meaningful health related resource and illustrate it with examples. After an assessment of the services and populations served, health science librarians can use these suggestions and examples for collection development in their medical libraries and/or consumer health collections. The Librarian may even be involved in creating a comic or graphic pathographic.

Keywords:

• Comics
• graphic medicine
• graphic pathologies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helen-Ann Brown Epstein

Helen-Ann Brown Epstein, MLS, MS.AHIP-D, FMLA ([email protected]), solo Informationist, Virtua Health Sciences Library, Virtua Health, 301 Lippincott Drive, Marlton, New Jersey 08053.