Guest Post by Sarah Russo I gravitated towards natural healing since I was a child. There has always been something alluring about finding medicine from the Earth. The concept that plants have compounds that directly interact and encourage our body’s own innate ability to heal is, to me, one of the planet’s greatest masteries. I come from a family of doctors. My mom was a nurse and my dad a neurologist. My grandpa and uncle were veterinarians. I used to think I wanted to be an animal doctor and take over the family practice one day. But then I realized… Read More

Hi Graphic Medicine community, I’m writing wearing my ALA Graphic Novels and Comics Round Table President-Elect hat to share a couple of events at ALA Annual 2021 relevant to us in the graphic medicine world. I’m sure I am missing other programming that’s relevant (it is a huge conference), so please post any that you know of that I missed in the comments! While there are certainly graphic medicine related titles at many of the vendors at the conference, you’ll definitely want to make a point to stop by the PSU Press booth and catch up on both the Graphic… Read More

My name is Pieter Kubben and I work as a neurosurgeon at Maastricht University Medical Center, The Netherlands. I actively participate in research lines on adaptive deep brain stimulation and brain computer interfacing (i.e. invasive neurotechnology). During my medical education I started developing websites and later, during residency, started developing mobile apps – of which one, called NeuroMind, has become the #1 app in neurosurgery worldwide.                               I enjoy crossing bridges from the clinical / neuro domain towards other domains, trying to add value that way…. Read More

  Needed for a Research Study: Graphic Medicine and Health Professional Students Who is Eligible? Students who have taken a course during their health professional education that involved the use of comics (also known as Graphic Medicine) within the last 5 years What will you be asked to do? Phone interview to explore medical students’ and other future health professionals’ perceptions of the impact of the use of comics in medical education Compensation: You will receive $25 gift card (BookShop.org or Starbucks) for your participation in this study If you have any questions or are interested in participating, please contact… Read More

The Graphic Medicine International Collective, in collaboration with Penn State College of Medicine, are launching a project to collect and tell stories from the front lines.  The project will connect front-line workers with comic artists to tell visual stories about the front-line workers’ experience during the COVID pandemic. We are aiming for a collection of about 20-25 stories to be shared online (and potentially published as an anthology), and are enlisting a diverse group or artists to help tell these stories. It’s meant to be a true collaboration between front-line worker and artist, with the two parties meeting and crafting… Read More

The Graphic Medicine International Collective (GMIC) is thrilled to announce the launch of our Graphic Medicine Liaison Program! We have long discussed  the need for field-specific champions of graphic medicine, given our ever-growing, multidisciplinary community and the impossibility of asking the board and larger organizing team to be experts in all things. The liaison program seeks to address this need by inviting active, trusted members of the graphic medicine community to serve as liaisons to their primary home fields. The role of the liaison is to maintain a page on this website dedicated to their field and describe how graphic… Read More

After several years of work and unavoidable delays, I am thrilled to announce the launch of Essential Graphic Medicine: An Annotated Bibliography! Funded by an ALA Carnegie-Whitney grant, which supports the preparation and publication of reading lists and other bibliographical aids, Alice Jaggers and I have been developing this tool since early 2018 as a way to aid library workers in the development of graphic medicine collections. For library folks new to the idea of comics, much less graphic medicine, it can be difficult to know where to begin and what might be considered important early titles for a collection… Read More

Find Stephanie’s full Pain Dairies comic here. “Pain Diaries” is a comic describing my experience with endometriosis as well as the fears, frustrations, and suffering that comes with having chronic pain. Endometriosis is a disorder where the uterine lining grows outside of the uterus, causing severe pain and a myriad of other serious health issues. From age 12 (when I first got my period) to age 29, I lived without a label for my suffering. Experiencing daily chronic pain without a diagnosis felt like I was existing in a large empty body of water, constantly drowning but never dying. Living with a… Read More

Spotlight post by James Sturm, Director and Cofounder of The Center for Cartoon Studies As director of The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), I had worked on putting together a graphic guide about democracy and governance. The book circulated widely and Stark County Mental Health & Addiction Recovery (StarkMHAR), a team responsible for engaging and educating middle school students, came across it and reached out to see if CCS would be interested in creating a graphic guide to mental health.  These projects seem to happen when the right opportunity meets the right cartoonist at the right time. When this opportunity… Read More