New England Graphic Medicine Summit Draws Out the Human Side of Healthcare

Nearly 200 attendees gather at MCPHS for the New England Graphic Medicine Summit to examine how visual storytelling makes illness and care more understandable.

With prose, there are only 26 letters to play with. But with pictures, “it feels like a million things before words ever register,” said author Michael Anthony. “That’s why some stories need to be told graphically.”

That message anchored the New England Graphic Medicine Summit (NEGM), held October 24 at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) in Boston and co-hosted by Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library. Part academic gathering, part creative workshop, the event brought together nearly 200 artists, educators, healthcare professionals, and students—in person and online—to explore how comics can communicate illness, healing, and the human side of medicine.

Anthony, a former Army medic who served in Iraq, shared stories from his graphic memoir “Just Another Meat-Eating Dirtbag,” which traces his transformation from soldier to civilian, and from carnivore to vegetarian, all framed through his love story with his wife. He spoke of scenes that still replay vividly in his mind—the kind of memories, he said, that can’t be written so much as drawn.

“We’d donate blood in the morning,” he recalled, “and see that same blood again spitting back at us in the operating room by afternoon.” For Anthony, the act of visual storytelling became a way to confront what prose could never quite hold.

Held inside the Richard E. Griffin Academic Center on Huntington Avenue—in the heart of Boston’s Longwood Medical Area—the summit offered a full morning of panels, lightning talks, and exhibitions examining how comics bring a human perspective to medicine. The sessions illustrated how Graphic Medicine is both an art form and a tool, fostering empathy, education, and connection. Personal narratives and visual works on topics such as long COVID, autism, fertility, menopause, and mental health demonstrated how visual storytelling makes complex or emotional topics more accessible.

When Images Say More

Among the presenters was artist Annika Mengwall, a Yale University sophomore pre-med student, who shared comics she created to help physicians discuss the HPV vaccine and lung cancer screenings with patients. Her approachable, character-driven visuals—including a talking virus particle—break down complex medical information in plain language. The handouts, now in use at pediatric otolaryngology clinics, are part of a study on how visual storytelling can improve patient comprehension and vaccine uptake.

While Mengwall’s comics translate science into stories, other presenters showed how the medium can turn personal experience into meaning. Ellen Grabiner, PhD, professor emerita at Simmons University, illustrated this in her presentation previewing her forthcoming book “Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine: Picturing,” co-authored with Briana Martino, Associate Professor and Chair of Communications, co-director of Cinema and Media Studies at Simmons University. Grabiner shared her comic “Piece of Cake,” which recounts her experience seeking to start a family before fertility clinics accepted lesbian patients. Grabiner highlighted the concept of “picturing,” giving just enough visual clues and cues—through lettering, gutters, captions—for readers to fill in the story themselves. “We can’t help but build stories around the pictures we see,” she said. One sequence shows the donor and a plastic specimen cup in a sterile exam room, and in the final panel, the cup appears again—carefully placed in a photo frame labeled “Dad.” “In my story, the lowly specimen cup is elevated to a tongue-in-cheek place of pride,” Grabiner said.

Expanding the Field

Another presentation came from Ellen Amster, a historian of medicine and professor at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. In her talk, “20,000 Leagues Under the Hospital: Using Comics to Explore Race and Colonialism for Medical Education and Clinical Practice,” Amster examined how colonialism shaped Western medicine and how comics can uncover those hidden histories.

Sharing excerpts from her forthcoming graphic manuscript, she traced the intersections of race, gender, and power in medical institutions—ending with a striking reminder that women were not even recognized as cardiologists until the 1970s. The gender gap in medicine, she said, is still an unfinished story.

Also on the program was Scarlett Shiloh, a Boston University researcher and artist, whose zine “I’m Getting a Hysterectomy but I’m Not Happy About It” explores “previvorship”—living with the knowledge of a high-risk genetic predisposition for cancer.

“Comics are a quick way to get my feelings and emotions across when I have thoughts that I just have to get out now,” they said.

Their zines capture the fear and anxiety that come with regular medical tests and procedures, what they call “scanxiety.” As they prepare for gender-affirming surgery, they said art helps them process uncertainty and reclaim their narrative.

“Comics, art, and zines help visualize painful experiences,” they told attendees.

A. David Lewis, PhD, associate professor of English and health humanities at MCPHS and a summit co-organizer, said the event reflected the University’s ongoing work in the health humanities. “The theme for this summit has always been incubation,” Lewis said. “Today’s energy should fuel richer and deeper local events over the next several years. This is the amuse-bouche of the feast yet to come.”

Lewis pointed out The Center for Health Humanities helped bring the summit to campus, and the MCPHS library maintains a robust Graphic Medicine collection. Colleagues from Simmons University and Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) contributed to planning panels and exhibits.

Lewis, who judged the 2023 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards—the Oscars of the comic book world, presented each July at San Diego Comic-Con—said the growing recognition of Graphic Medicine within mainstream comics points to its cultural importance. “We’re seeing a convergence,” he noted, “where the artistry of comics and the empathy of medicine are appreciated in the same frame.”