Healthcare Comics

This comic, and the series of workshops that produced it, emerged from a partnership between the Comics Studies team in the School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, and the School of Dentistry, both at the University of Dundee in Scotland. In recent years we have produced many comics about oral health and homelessness, oral health and public engagement, and several other themes. This led to a series of workshops as part of the postgraduate student-learning Forum for Public Engagement, Inclusion, and Impact. This forum aims to raise awareness of health/oral health inequalities in culturally diverse groups. Over the course of three intensive workshops, ten students who were undertaking Masters programmes in Dental Public Health (MDPH) and Public Health (MPH) worked together to produce three stories, which are presented here. In each case, the aim was to think about ways to use comics to communicate an important health message, but also to show the impact health professionals can make on the experience of patients and the public more generally.

Working in Dundee Comics Creative Space, and with help from Dr Damon Herd and Thushani Indumani Devi Wijesiri, the students worked in groups to produce scripts and sketches, which comics artist Clio Ding, who joined the workshops online from Singapore, then used to produce the final comics. The students did a fantastic job and responded with huge enthusiasm and creativity, and we are all very grateful to Clio for bringing these stories to life!