‘To donate or not to donate? that is the question!’: an organ and body donation comic

Abstract

Conversations surrounding end of life and death can be difficult or taboo for some, meaning that matters of organ and body donation are not widely discussed. To Donate or Not to Donate? That is the Question! is a comic developed to raise awareness and challenge common misconceptions about donation by encouraging the publics to engage in informed discussions about the different options available. This case study proposes graphic medicine as an alternative method of presenting donation information to a public audience, and illustrates how the comic medium can communicate body donation information in an accessible and engaging way.

Application Characteristics and Innovation of Digital Technology in Visual Communication Design

“…Its theory has shadows of many disciplines such as market, media, society, physiology, and aesthetics. e category of design can no longer be summarized by ordinary art or language categories [18]. It covers a wider range of levels.…”

The use of comics to promote health awareness: A template using nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

“…[38][39][40][41][42] Besides its capacity to influence behaviours, comics have been reported to be approachable and promote more engagement and motivation than regular text-based materials while garnering the same knowledge acquisition, which is particularly advantageous in engaging noninterested and new audiences while demonstrating that entertainment and education are not mutually exclusive. [43][44][45][46] Comics have been used to raise awareness about diseases and their symptoms among the general public, to assist patients and their families better understand their illness, to promote the self-management of chronic conditions, to improve therapeutic adherence in children, 47 to support informed decision-making in clinical procedures and therapeutic options, 48,49 to facilitate or ameliorate patients' healthcare experience, 50 to promote surgical procedures and organ donation 51,52 and to increase follow-up rates in primary care provider transitions. 45,53 The appropriation of comics in the domains of disease prevention and health promotion began with efforts directed at communicable diseases, mostly targeting children and often as part of multimodal campaigns, alongside other media formats.…”

Graphic medicine meets human anatomy: The potential role of comics in raising whole body donation awareness in Italy and beyond. A pilot study

“…As an accessible medium for patient education and public outreach (McNicol, 2017), graphic medicine is used to raise awareness on numerous current topics such as the barriers for people with disabilities (Manohar, 2022), heart diseases (Swanson, 2016), and the Covid‐19 pandemic (Mirza, 2021; Thekkekarott Kuruvila & Hegde, 2022a,b). Graphic medicine's potential is based in the simplicity, clarity, and immediacy of visual storytelling to disclose health‐education messages and social issues that are often difficult to understand (Irwin et al, 2020). Moreover, recent research acknowledges the use of graphic medicine as potential in scientific education in improving understanding of clinical concepts (Joshi et al, 2019; Hoffman, 2021).…”

“…Nonetheless, even for gross anatomy education, graphic medicine has also showed benefits for gross anatomy education (Park et al, 2011; Shin et al, 2013; Kim et al, 2017). The use of comics may also help to talk about topics considered taboos, such as death and cadaver dissection (Irwin et al, 2020; Zumwalt, 2021). Therefore, the aims of this pilot‐project were: to introduce graphic medicine to the medical students of the University of Bologna that entered in a dissecting room for the first time, focusing the attention on the potentialities of this means of communication and exploring its value in medical education; and to evaluate and reflect on the capability of this innovative communicative tool for the dissemination of thorny topics, such as whole body donation awareness raising, before using it in the general population.…”