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About the comic:

In “Empathy 101,” comics journalist Josh Neufeld uses the comic book form to highlight how medical schools across the U.S. have explored improv comedy, virtual reality and, yes, comics to improve communication and understanding between physicians and their patients. 

The comic self-reflectively discusses the growing field of graphic medicine, which uses comics as a tool to tell personal stories about health care experiences, as well as to distill and discuss complex medical topics. Neufeld considers comics an ideal medium for a nonfiction piece about topic at hand. As he explains, comics “engender a strong sense of empathy for the ‘characters’ in the story.”

Neufeld’s well-sourced comic draws on a large body of published academic research, newspaper articles, and interviews with expert sources, including Dr. Marshall Chin, a physician and professor who teaches health equity courses at U. Chicago Medicine; Dr. Mohammadreza Hojat, a research professor at Thomas Jefferson University, who developed the Jefferson Scale of Empathy to measure the capacity in health care providers; and Kriota Willberg, a visual artist and clinical massage therapist who practices and teaches graphic medicine.

The characters’ quotes, appearing in shaded pink speech bubbles or pink rectangles, come directly from their interviews with Neufeld, from their interviews in newspaper articles, or from research papers authored by the characters. The text in light green represents Neufeld’s own narrative.

Neufeld is the creator of several graphic medicine comics, including “Vaccinated at the Ball: A True Story about Trusted Messengers,” which won the 2023 GMIC Award for Excellence in Graphic Medicine, Short Form, from the Graphic Medicine International Collective.

Sources:

“Lessons From Improv Comedy to Reduce Health Disparities.” Marshall H. Chin. JAMA Internal Medicine, December 2019.

“5 Questions: How Doctors’ Empathy Improves Patient Care: Studies Have Shown That Physicians Who Score Higher on Empathy Have More Positive Patient Outcomes.” Sandy Bauers. The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 2019.

“Does Empathy Decline in the Clinical Phase of Medical Education? A Nationwide Multi-Institutional Cross-Sectional Study of Students at DO-Granting Medical Schools.” Mohammadreza Hojat, Stephen C. Shannon, Jennifer DeSantis, Mark R. Speicher, Lynn Bragan and Leonard H. Calabrese. Academic Medicine, June 2020.

“Changes in Empathy During Medical Education: An Example From Turkey.” Fusun Artiran Igde and Mustafa Kursat Sahin. Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences, September/October 2017.

“Empathy Decline and its Reasons: A Systematic Review of Studies with Medical Students and Residents.” Melanie Neumann, Friedrich Edelhäuse. Diethard Tauschel, Martin R Fischer, Markus Wirtz, Christiane Woopen, Aviad Haramati, and Christian Scheffer. Academic Medicine, August 2011.

“Characterizing Changes in Student Empathy Throughout Medical School.” Daniel C. R. Chen, Daniel S. Kirshenbaum, Jun Yan, Elaine Kirshenbaum, and Robert H. Aseltine. Medical Teacher, March 2012.

“A Cross-sectional Measurement of Medical Student Empathy.” Daniel Chen, Robert Lew, Warren Hershman, and Jay Orlander.  Journal of General Internal Medicine, July 2007.

“Improvisational and Standup Comedy Graphic Medicine and Theatre of the Oppressed to Teach Advancing Health Equity.” Marshall H. Chin, Nicola M. Orlov, Brian C. Callender, James Dolan, Doriane C. Miller, Monica E. Peek, Jennifer M. Rusiecki and Monica B. Vela. Academic Medicine, December 2022.

“Cultivating Empathy Through Virtual Reality: Advancing Conversations About Racism Inequity and Climate in Medicine.” Robert O. Roswell, Courtney D. Cogburn, Jack Tocco, Johanna Martinez, Catherine Bangeranye, Jeremy N. Bailenson, Michael Wright, Jennifer H. Mieres and Lawrence Smith. Academic Medicine, November 2020.

“Increasing Empathy for Children in Dental Students Using Virtual Reality.” Shijia Hu and Bien Wen Pui Lai. International Journal of Pediatric Dentistry, February 2022.

“Using Virtual Reality in Medical Education to Teach Empathy.” Elizabeth Dyer, Barbara J. Swartzlander and Marilyn R. Gugliucci. Journal of the Medical Library Association, October 2018.

“Best of Graphic Medicine – The 2023 Graphic Medicine International Collective Awards.” Michael J. Green and Kevin Wolf. JAMA, December 2023.

“Our Cancer Year.” Harvey Pekar (author), Joyce Brabner (author), and Frank Stack (illustrator). Da Capo Press, 1994.

“The Bad Doctor: The Troubled Life and Times of Dr. Iwan James.” Ian Williams. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.

“Documenting serious issues with comics journalism: An interview with Josh Neufeld.” Carmen Nobel.  The Journalist’s Resource, November 2020.

“A Tale of Two Pandemics: A Nonfiction Comic About Historical Racial Health Disparities.” by The Journalists’ Resource on Nov. 16, 2020: https://journalistsresource.org/race-and-gender/pandemics-comic-racial-health-disparities/

“Review: ‘The Bad Doctor’ and ‘Graphic Medicine Manifesto’.” Abigail Zuger. The New York Times Book Review, June 2015.

“The Graphic Medicine Manifesto.”  MK Czerwiec, Ian Williams, Susan Merrill Squier, Michael J. Green, Kimberly R. Myers, and Scott T. Smith. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.

“Difficult Doctors, Difficult Patients: Building Empathy.” Patricia F. Anderson, Elise Wesco and Ruth C. Carlos. Journal of the American College of Radiology, December 2016.

“Comics and Medicine: Helping Med Students Form Their Professional Identities.” Penn State Health News, May 2015.

“Green Gets Serious About Comics: Professor Discusses Benefits of Graphic Medicine at National Institutes of Health.” Penn State, April 2018.

Dr. Green’s 7-class online higher education curriculum on graphic medicine, which can be found here. 

“Don’t Understand How Diabetes Works? Dr. Michael Natter Can Draw It Out for You.” NYU Langone  Health News Hub, November 2023.

“Comics and Medicine: Peering Into the Process of Professional Identity Formation.” Michael Green.  Academic Medicine, June 2015. 

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This piece is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International License, which means you’re welcome and encouraged to republish it, provided you credit and/or link back to the original source. For educators, journalists and anyone else who would like to republish it in print, we are providing access to a high-resolution PDF of the comic here: Download a high-resolution PDF.

Editor’s note:

In “Vaccinated at the Ball: A True Story About Trusted Messengers,” Josh Neufeld uses the form of comics journalism to highlight a recent perspective article published in the “Opinions, Ideas & Practice” section of the American Journal of Public Health. The comic draws on the article itself along with additional sources — including recent interviews with several of the co-authors, Randi Beth Singer, Natasha Crooks, Rebecca Singer, Noel C. Green and Jahari Stamps.

Those five people are the main characters of the comic, which details an effort in Chicago last year to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates among Black and Latino members of the city’s LGBTQ community. The images of people attending the House balls are based largely on photos and videos of actual events, and the image of #JamOutSaveLives is based on a video that appeared on Twitter and Instagram.

The characters’ speech-bubble quotes come directly from their 2022 interviews with Neufeld or quotes from the AJPH commentary. The captions in rectangular boxes comprise Neufeld’s own narrative — except in cases when he uses quotation marks to denote a direct quotation. “I tried to let the voices of Randi, Natasha, Rebecca, Noel, and particularly Jahari guide the narrative,” Neufeld says. “I’m so grateful that they spoke to me about their editorial, and I hope that I captured their experiences honestly.”

Neufeld adds that he considers “Vaccinated at the Ball” to be “a perfect counterpart to a previous story of mine, published by The Journalist’s Resource back in November 2020, ‘A Tale of Two Pandemics.’ In fact, a few panels in this story were taken directly from that earlier piece.”

The panels and images in this piece that first appeared in “A Tale of Two Pandemics” are the image of mourners at a Chicago funeral; the panel representing the Tuskegee experiments, which is based on photos in the public record; the panel of J. Marion Sims’s experiments on enslaved Black women in the 1800s, which is based on a historical painting by Robert Thom; and the panels with quotes from Dr. Lisa Cooper, whom Neufeld interviewed in 2020.

Neufeld’s previous comics have covered a wide range of topics, including public health crises, academic research and journalism itself. He is best known for his book A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, which tells the true story of several New Orleans residents who lived through Hurricane Katrina. He is also the co-author of The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, an illustrated history of journalism, and numerous other works — including a comics journalism piece about social science research on consumer behavior.

“As I learned from nonfiction comics storytellers like Joe Sacco and Harvey Pekar, comics can often be used to create empathy and also to bring abstract concepts to life,” he says. “That’s why I so enjoyed the section of this story that deals with the discussion of ‘trauma-informed approaches’ and the ‘diffusion of innovation’ theory. My hope is that this piece will bring this story — and its lessons — to life in new and unexpected ways.”

Sources:

“Ballroom Icons and the Power to Promote COVID-19 Vaccination Among Black and Brown LGBTQ+ Individuals.” Randi Beth Singer, PhD;  Natasha Crooks, PhD; Rebecca Singer, PhD; Noel Green, BS; Jahari Stamps; Crystal Patil, PhD; and Alicia Matthews, PhD. American Journal of Public Health, Dec. 21, 2021.

“Black Chicagoans Aren’t Getting Vaccinated At The Same Rate As Others — And It’s More Than Just Distrust.” Maxwell Evans. Block Club Chicago, May 3, 2021.

“Memory and Medicine: A Historian’s Perspective on Commemorating Marion J. Sims.” Susan M. Reverby. Perspectives on History, Sept. 17, 2017.

“$1,000 Legendary Performance (Part 2) @ Paragon 10: Ten’s Across (10th Anniversary Ball) 2021.” YouTube video uploaded by Jay Garçon.

“#JamOutSaveLives.” Jahari Stamps and Ryan Ryuu. 2021.

“A Tale of Two Pandemics” by Josh Neufeld. The Journalist’s Resource, Nov. 16, 2020.

Related reading:

“Exploring Health and Wellbeing in the US House Ball Community: A Systematic Review.” Maria Olivas, Sean Bear, Abraham Johnson and Stacy Smallwood. Spotlight on Public Health Research, Sept. 20, 2019.

“Trauma-informed Care: What it is and Why it’s Important.” Monique Tello. Harvard Health Blog, Oct. 6, 2018.

“Diffusion of Innovation Theory.” June Kaminski. Canadian Journal of Nursing Informatics, June 19, 2011.

“Documenting Serious Issues with Comics Journalism: An Interview with Josh Neufeld.” Carmen Nobel. The Journalist’s Resource, Nov. 16, 2020.

The post Vaccinated at the ball: A true story about trusted messengers appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

About this piece:

In a “A Tale of Two Pandemics: Historical Insights on Persistent Racial Disparities,” Josh Neufeld uses the form of comics journalism to highlight a recent research article published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The comic draws on the research article itself, along with additional sources — including interviews with co-authors Lakshmi Krishnan, S. Michelle Ogunwole and Lisa A. Cooper. The three medical doctors are the main characters of the comic, which explains racial health disparities and the spread of misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic and the 1918 influenza pandemic. The doctors’ speech-bubble quotes come directly from their interviews with Neufeld. The text in rectangular boxes comprises Neufeld’s own narrative — except in cases when he uses quotation marks to denote a direct quotation.

In cases where Neufeld quotes directly from the doctors’ research article, he depicts the authors speaking in unison — akin to a Greek chorus. “I let their voices guide the narrative,” Neufeld says. “I’m so grateful that they spoke to me about their article!”

The social media posts featured in the comic are quoted verbatim from actual posts, and many of the drawings are based on news photos — such as Associated Press photographer Bebeto Matthews’ images of people waiting in line for face masks and food in New York last April. For more on Josh Neufeld’s comics journalism process, please see our companion Q&A.

This piece is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International License, which means you’re welcome to republish it, provided you credit and link back to the original source. For educators, editors and anyone else who would like to republish it in print, we are providing access to a high-resolution PDF here: Download a high-resolution PDF.

Sources and related resources:

“Historical Insights on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, and Racial Disparities: Illuminating a Path Forward.” Lakshmi Krishnan, S. Michelle Ogunwole and Lisa A. Cooper. Annals of Internal Medicine, Sept. 15, 2020.

“The Color of Coronavirus: Covid-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.” APM Research Lab, last updated Nov. 12, 2020.

“Memory and Medicine: A Historian’s Perspective on Commemorating Marion J. Sims.” Susan M. Reverby. Perspectives on History, Sept. 17, 2017.

“The Myth of Black Immunity: Racialized Disease During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Chelsey Carter and Ezelle Sanford III. Black Perspectives, April 3, 2020.

“Canaries in the Coal Mine, COVID-19 Misinformation and Black Communities.” Brandi Collins-Dexter. Discussion Paper from the Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, 2020.

The post A tale of two pandemics: A nonfiction comic about historical racial health disparities appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Additional information about differential privacy:

• The Census Bureau has compiled information about differential privacy here, as well as a history of census data protections dating back to 1790.

• The National Conference of State Legislators has a differential privacy explainer that discusses the issue of how differential privacy might disproportionally affect data in rural areas.

• “Balancing Data Utility and Confidentiality in the 2020 U.S. Census” is a living document in which technology scholar Danah Boyd digs into the reasons for and potential risks of differential privacy. Boyd is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder of the Data and Society Research Institute.

• Here’s a link to an 18-minute video in which computer scientist Cynthia Dwork provides a definition of differential privacy. Dwork is a professor of computer science at the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and author of several pioneering papers on differential privacy, including “Differential Privacy and the US Census.”

• This piece is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For educators, editors and anyone else who would like to republish it in print, we are providing access to a high-resolution PDF of this comic here: Download a high-resolution PDF .

The post A brief introduction to differential privacy: A data protection plan for the 2020 census appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.

Sources and additional resources:

· This piece is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For educators, editors and anyone else who would like to republish it in print, we are providing access to a high-resolution PDF here: Download the PDF.

· A related research roundup summarizes several studies that examine how census undercounts can hurt U.S. communities. The roundup includes the study that provided the information for the belt-tightening panel in the comic strip.

· “Estimating the Effect of Asking About Citizenship on the U.S. Census” is a Shorenstein Center discussion paper in which researchers find that “asking about citizenship status significantly increases the percent of questions skipped, with particularly strong effects among Hispanics, and makes respondents less likely to report having members of their household who are of Hispanic ethnicity.” The paper provided the information for the bar chart in the comic strip.

· “Can Cities Save the Census? A Local Framework for Our Nation’s First Digital Count” is a Shorenstein Center discussion paper that “provides a framework for understanding the challenges ahead and the ways in which cities can uniquely impact their own counts.”

· The Government Accountability Office’s 2019 High Risk List includes programs and operations deemed risky “due to their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or that need transformation.”

· These 7 tips for covering the US census are meant to help bolster news coverage of the decennial event.

The post A graphic guide to the 2020 US census appeared first on The Journalist's Resource.