Can lessons from illustrated narratives apply to health care? At the University of Illinois Springfield, students are discovering that stories told through words and images can offer powerful insight into illness, caregiving and the human side of medicine.

Lan Dong, the Louise Hartman Schewe and Karl Schewe Professor in Liberal Arts and Sciences and a faculty member in the UIS English Department, is advancing teaching and research in narrative medicine and graphic medicine, interdisciplinary fields that examine how people experience and understand health through storytelling.

Narrative medicine focuses on how patients, families, caregivers and medical and service professionals tell stories about illness, treatment and care. These stories emphasize listening, empathy and attention to lived experience alongside medical knowledge. Graphic medicine builds on this approach by using visual narratives to explore complex health experiences that are often difficult to express through words alone.

“These narratives can visualize the nonlinear processes of identifying symptoms, getting diagnoses, adjusting medication, navigating health care and insurance systems, and so much more,” Dong said. “They are effective in challenging the misperceptions and stigma associated with chronic conditions such as Alzheimer’s and in revealing issues of equity and access.”

Those ideas are central to ENG 382: Comics, Health, Illness, a course Dong developed at UIS. The class examines health and illness in a global context through graphic narratives, visual data, memoirs and critical writing. Students explore topics such as disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment while also considering what it means to live with illness (physical or mental, acute or chronic) or disability or to provide care for someone.

Students of different majors often enter the course unsure how visual storytelling connects to health. Many leave with a deeper understanding of empathy, ethics and communication, skills that apply well beyond the classroom. Dong said her students are particularly fond of the infographic project, where they get to showcase their critical thinking, research, visual literacy and creativity. Here are a few examples among many:

• C.J. Campbell’s presentation, “Utilizing Infographics to Educate Asian Communities about Fatty Liver Disease,” won the 2025 UIS Student Arts and Research Symposium Outstanding Award in Social Sciences.
• Stephen Taghan’s project, “Leprosy in India—Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” won the English Department’s Best Undergraduate Digital Project.
• Sonia Zayas’s infographic, “Chikungunya in the Dominican Republic,” won the English Department’s Community Award.

Building on the success of ENG 382, Dong is developing a new course, ENG 383: Graphic Medicine and Dementia, planned for fall 2026. The course will focus on dementia, memory loss, identity and caregiving, using visual storytelling to examine experiences from patient, family and community perspectives.

Dong recently shared her research at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention. Her presentation examined how Dana Walrath’s “Aliceheimer’s: Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass” portrays caregiving and care-receiving as shared, embodied experiences, highlighting how combining images and language can reveal emotional and relational aspects of illness often overlooked in traditional medical writing. An expanded version of her essay will be published in Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society later this year. Another forthcoming article of hers contextualizes Katie Green’s “Lighter Than My Shadow” within the studies of graphic medicine and psychoanalysis and discusses mental health and coming-of-age. Both books are among the graphic narratives she teaches at UIS.

Infographics created by UIS students