The use of comic books, graphic novels, and fotonovelas as a health promotion tool
Abstract
Key take-home messages
- Comics — including graphic novels, comic books, and fotonovelas — are one way to learn and teach about illness (1) as the reader can relate words and images to personal experience (2, 3).
- Generally, comics focused on health can fall into two different categories: memoirs about personal health or an experience of illness, and comics that consist of instructional content designed for education (4).
- The Undetectables Intervention utilized a comic book series alongside interdisciplinary adherence support teams and financial incentives to promote adherence to HIV medication with favourable results (5).
- Fotonovela interventions demonstrated positive outcomes for several health conditions (6-8).
- There appears to be a limited amount of literature describing how to design or evaluate comics for health promotion purposes.
Authors
The Ontario HIV Treatment Network: Rapid Response Service
Year
2020
Topics
- Population(s)
- General HIV+ population
- General HIV- population
- Engagement and Care Cascade
- Linkage/engagement in care
- Treatment
- Prevention
- Biomedical interventions
- Education/media campaigns
- Testing
- Testing
