Cartooning in Health Care

Cathy Leamy, presenter at our upcoming Toronto 2012 conference, will be giving a talk and a workshop on cartooning in health care at the International Conference on Health Science & Communications in Providence, Rhode Island June 20-23. From the conference website:

Cartooning in Healthcare

Cathy Leamy
Independent Cartoonist
Web developer, Massachusetts General Hospital

Comics (including cartoons, comic books and strips, webcomics, graphic novels, and magazines) offer a valuable communication format, especially for medicine and health care. Dry, confusing, or daunting material can be presented in ways that engage and entertain readers, simplify complex topics, cater to different learning styles, and even foster a sense of empathy and community. Comics creation and distribution are enjoying a fantastic time of activity thanks to social media tools and web publishing platforms. Health care itself is experiencing a surge of creativity in this arena; practitioners, educators, and patients are part of a “graphic medicine” movement, producing an array of material including illness memoirs, instructional books, and even new techniques of training care providers.