Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures can often share ideas, meaning, and feelings that words sometimes cannot express. Over the past four months, I have had the pleasure of working with patient partners and researchers to create a comic book showing the experience of someone starting a Type 2 diabetes remission program. Creating this comic book was part of a larger study aimed at sharing knowledge or spreading the word about the best ways for achieving Type 2 diabetes remission.
As with most of us, I come into this opportunity knowing a little bit about Type 2 diabetes. However, through this work of creating comic books, by listening and creating stories through pictures, I learned a great deal more. Here are some of the big lessons I learned:
People living with Type 2 diabetes may also be dealing with shame, a feeling of being judged (stigma), and sad moments. Talking about these feelings or addressing them does not mean pointing out a problem and doing nothing about it. Instead, it is helpful to show the possible solutions. This may involve showing an example set of actions, interactions, and ways of thinking that help show how people come to think about the problem and actually see solutions for themselves. In fact, so much of storytelling through sharing knowledge (such as this comic book) is to share the problem(s), evidence or solutions, and give opportunity and hope. This was something I was able to learn through the help of the patient partners and researchers who worked on the script.
Another lesson is the importance of making images or comics easy to see for adults. There is an emphasis on adults as the main readers, because the high-quality literature review that provided evidence for the comic book, along with the stories of our patient partners, included individuals with Type 2 diabetes aged 42–59 years. Making the pictures easy to see for anyone may include creating images with colours that work for people who are colour-blind and having fonts that are large and simple to read. Easy access can also mean choosing a simple, clear format, and paying careful attention to the personal opinions, values and likes that the images may form.
Although lessons have been learned through making the comics, the effectiveness of comics as knowledge products is still unknown. I am excited for when the knowledge products are evaluated! More lessons will probably appear by then. But for now, the ultimate lesson is to listen to people’s stories, in whatever form they may come in.
See below for links to other resources with information on T2D remission:
- Click this link to read the published journal article that provided the evidence for this work.
- Discover the comic strip created by Jing Yi on the journey towards T2D remission here.
About the author
Jing Yi Xie
Jing Yi is an undergraduate student in Arts and Science at McMaster University with a passion for communicating experiences through illustrations.