A healthy liver will always deliver: development of a NAFLD awareness comic

A Healthy Liver Will Always Deliver: Impact Study of a Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) Awareness Comic

Based on previous work, we developed the comic "A healthy liver will always deliver!" to raise awareness about Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) and promote healthy lifestyles. An online pre-post questionnaire design demonstrated an increase in health-threat beliefs regarding NAFLD among the general public, as well as response efficacy and self-efficacy beliefs, normative and control beliefs regarding the maintenance of preventive strategies involving healthy diets and active lifestyles, after interaction with the comic's narrative. This effect was more evident in women. Furthermore, although we could not perform all the ideal controls during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the online strategy attracted mostly university education-level subjects, the comic seemed relatable and engaging. However, more work will have to be performed to ensure its usefulness in terms of acquired knowledge and behavior changes, especially in at-risk segments of the population.

Promoting advanced medical services in the framework of 3PM-a proof-of-concept by the "Centro" Region of Portugal

Multidisciplinary team from three universities based in the "Centro" Region of Portugal developed diverse approaches as parts of a project dedicated to enhancing and expanding Predictive, Preventive, and Personalized Medicine (3PM) in the Region. In a sense, outcomes acted as a proof-of-concept, in that they demonstrated the feasibility, but also the relevance of the approaches. The accomplishments comprise defining a new regional strategy for implementing 3PM within the Region, training of human resources in genomic sequencing, and generating good practices handbooks dedicated to diagnostic testing via next-generation sequencing, to legal and ethical concerns, and to knowledge transfer and entrepreneurship, aimed at increasing literacy on 3PM approaches. Further approaches also included support for entrepreneurship development and start-ups, and diverse and relevant initiatives aimed at increasing literacy relevant to 3PM. Efforts to enhance literacy encompassed citizens across the board, from patients and high school students to health professionals and health students. This focus on empowerment through literacy involved a variety of initiatives, including the creation of an illustrated book on genomics and the production of two theater plays centered on genetics. Additionally, authors stressed that genomic tools are relevant, but they are not the only resources 3PM is based on. Thus, they defend that other initiatives intended to enable citizens to take 3PM should include multi-omics and, having in mind the socio-economic burden of chronic diseases, suboptimal health status approaches in the 3PM framework should also be considered, in order to anticipate medical intervention in the subclinical phase.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13167-024-00353-9.

Comics in Science and Health Communication: Insights From Mutual Collaboration and Framing a Research Practice

Comics have been used as a tool for learning, teaching, understanding, raising awareness and changing behaviours. Researchers are taking more advantage of this medium as comics in research has become a growing field. Notwithstanding, comics as research practice/method has received less attention, particularly the research framework involved in making comics. Here, we detail the research process through the drawing to create a comic about non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. We argue that deciding on visual choices intersecting the perspectives of both artist and researchers whilst promoting reflexivity can be best understood through mutual collaboration. We depict examples of how the active inter/trans/disciplinary research environment, incorporating perceptions, experiences, tensions, from the artist and researchers, and respective disciplines, also informed by patient testimonies, resulted in (new) meanings and ways of thinking in terms of visual content and structure. Particularly when creating the characters and when using multimodality and resources afforded by comics –visual metaphor, anthropomorphism, and scientific sketchnote–, to portray the human body and bring familiarity and simplicity to complex cellular and metabolic events. We end with a comic strip framing comics as research practice, outlining the active engagement during the drawing processes and the research framework that combined a mixed method research approach for creating a tool useful towards understanding science and health promotion.