Ariya Desai is a high school student with a passion for health education, the empowerment of the South Asian community, and using creative storytelling to make complex medical topics more accessible. Through her graphic story, she explores why South Asian populations face a higher risk of developing diabetes.

The Graphic Medicine International Collective (GMIC) is thrilled to announce the winners of  the 2026 GMIC Awards!!! The winners in each of three categories of the 2026 Graphic Medicine International Collective Awards were announced on Saturday, July 25th, 2026, at the GMIC annual conference in Baltimore. You can read about each of the shortlisted works in each category here. These awards are made possible by your donations and a generous matching gift in Honor of Nancy and Herbert Wolf. The matching gift is intended to honor and carry on Nancy and Herbert’s legacy of service and care. You can contribute to… Read More

“Trump’s War on Cancer Patients,” was born out of the GMIC Athlone Conference where Ryan Montoya and Adam Bessie first met. This concise comic explores Adam’s experience with his current brain cancer, which has returned since Trump came back to power. In this time, he’s been fighting to survive – chemo, radiation, and awake surgery – while at the same time the Trump administration has fought to take away the very treatments that keep him, and other cancer patients like him, alive.     Adam Bessie had an awake brain surgery a few months ago and is now on chemotherapy. … Read More

I am an ECFMG-certified physician and medical illustrator with a passion for using visual storytelling to make medicine more approachable and memorable. My work uses character-based visual mnemonics as cognitive hooks to help medical students understand complex concepts across different areas of medicine. I also create medical illustrations designed to support patient education and make difficult medical concepts easier to understand. Since my original Spotlight, I have continued developing my character-based medical illustration work and have expanded beyond cardiopathology. I am now developing a series of visual mnemonics across different areas of medicine, including nephrology, hepatology, and fetal circulation.  Nida… Read More

Our latest Spotlight is authored by Matt Peters and  focuses on the World of Viruses/Biology of Human website and its educational comics and graphic novels. Tags: bacteria, COVID-19, foot and mouth disease, fungi, human immunodeficiency virus, human papillomavirus, infectious diseases, influenza, measles, microbes, viruses About the Work The World of Viruses/Biology of Human website compiles the work from three science education grants that were awarded to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) between 2007 and 2020. Two of the grants, which came from the National Institutes of Health, funded efforts to stimulate public interest in science and youth engagement in science-focused… Read More