NNLM New England Region Hosts the New England Graphic Medicine ComicCon & Workshop

Posted by Jerry Kauppila on April 19th, 2019 Posted in: Advocacy, Consumer Health, Outreach, Public Health
Tags: graphic medicine

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On April 10th, the NNLM New England Region (NER) hosted the New England Graphic Medicine ComicCon at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.

The day was filled with sessions for artists, educators, and librarians, discussing the joining of science and art in graphic medicine mediums to help promote NNLM’s mission:

“…to advance the progress of medicine and improve the public health by providing all U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improving the public’s access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health.”

The conference kicked off with keynote speaker, and current NNLM Reading Club Kit author, Rachel Lindsay. Rachel presented Reclaiming Patient Narrative Through Graphic Medicine, and discussed her life story that led to the creation of RX: A Graphic Memoir. You can find out more about RX by applying for a reading club kit containing Rachel’s book.

One of the panelists, Maki Naro, is a self-proclaimed illustrator, science communicator, and nerd. Maki talked about Creating Science Comics: Communicating Big Ideas in Small Panels. In 2014, Maki’s comic Vaccines Work. Here are the Facts was published on his website.

TheNib.com is a site that “looks at what is going down in the world, all in comics form.” Vaccines Work remains one of the site’s most relevant and popular posts as measles and whooping cough outbreaks continue around the nation.

Vaccines Work. Here are the Facts.

Gluten The Facts and The Fad

Other sessions included collection management, course and program design, and a case study of a cartooning project connecting migrant dairy workers in Vermont with cartoonists to document mental health issues associated with trauma and isolation, El Viaje Más Caro / The Most Costly Journey.

NER is leading the way in supporting graphic medicine as a means of communicating the NNLM mission. This conference was a great jumping off point. PSR members can apply now for several graphic medicine titles in our reading club kits, and watch out for more graphic medicine tie-ins in the near future!