Graphic medicine, the interface between comics and healthcare, is increasingly used in medicine to convey complex information in a concise way.
Vinald Francis, a biomedical illustrator at the Geisel School of Medicine, and his collaborator Rebecca Gardner, MD, a physician and researcher at Brown University School of Medicine, were invited to give two talks this summer at this year’s conference in Athlone, Ireland. They presented their recent work. A comic about language at the bedside was published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year, and the other, a comic about medical students’ bedside rounds, is part of an ongoing research study by Gardner.
“It was an exciting conference and I was honored to represent Dartmouth in the emerging field of graphic medicine,” Francis says of the experience, which also included working with Shontay Delalue, PhD, MPH’24, senior vice president and senior diversity officer at Dartmouth. In addition to her administrative role, Delalue teaches in Geisel’s in-person Master of Public Health program and earned her master’s degree in public health in Geisel’s hybrid program last spring.
“Shontay and I submitted our unfinished work for publication at the conference and it was accepted,” says Francis. “Our presentation was well received and we were given several opportunities to share ideas with colleagues in the US and Europe once our comic is published.”
“Our comic draws on my research into medical misogynoir, the intersection of racism and sexism in healthcare, to create a visual teaching tool that goes beyond an academic paper,” explains Delalue. “The comic examines the medical treatment and exploitation of black women in the United States from the 19th to the 21st century.”
The medical comic illustrates three centuries of medical misogyny and draws inspiration from true events, such as the “father of modern gynecology,” James Marion Sims, who performed non-consensual and non-anaesthetic procedures on enslaved black women and girls as young as 14. Sims believed that black people did not feel pain.
“Artist Michelle Browder has curated a phenomenal museum in Alabama with an outdoor art installation honoring the three slaves Sims most interfered with: Anarcha, Betsey and Lucy,” says Delalue, who was able to visit the museum in April.
“In my research, I discovered that Browder refers to these enslaved women as ‘mothers of gynecology’ – turning this traditional narrative on its head,” Francis adds. “Similarly, our comic highlights voices that have too often been silenced.”
The combination of images and words can be both disarming and engaging, drawing people to information in a way that text alone cannot. Francis believes that more and more people are realizing the value of medical comics as a valuable teaching tool.
“The use of graphic medicine has many implications for public health and medicine, and for good reason, as the format is easily accessible, particularly for topics that are difficult to understand, such as health inequalities,” notes Francis. “Health professionals are realizing that medical comics are a creative way to teach medical students and the general public, as people can more easily absorb and understand complex information in this format.”
