Through comics and graphic novels, artists are able to communicate how illness or disability impacts their daily lives and personal perspectives. The National Library of Medicine offers this online exhibit dedicated to comics about disability, health, and illness. This exhibit includes portions of Ellen Forney's graphic novel Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me; Julia Wertz's The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (which discusses the artist's diagnosis of lupus); MK Czerwiks's Taking Turns: Stories from the HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, and much more. For health educators, this collection is accompanied by two educational resources. The first is a lesson plan designed for students between grades 7-10 and is centered on Forney's book. The second is a multi-class module designed for university-level students who are considering entering the healthcare profession. These modules allow students to explore how society and environment inform our conceptions of disabilities, consider how bias and stigmatization impact individuals with disabilities, examine how illness affects caretakers, and much more.
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