Visual Art and Medical Narratives as Universal Connectors in Health Communication: An Exploratory Study

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Beck, Tracey
Giese, Steven
Khoo, Tien K
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2025
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Abstract

Health-related information can often be overwhelming for consumers resulting in difficulty in interpretation and application. Historically, art and narratives have played key roles in communication within diverse populations however collectively have received little recognition as a means to enable health literacy. This study aims to investigate patient/caregiver narratives and visual art as a modality to improve knowledge translation and health literacy in the wider community. Nine recently discharged patients and 1 caregiver from a regional hospital were paired with 10 tertiary visual arts students for interview. Each narrative was transformed into visual art and exhibited at a community art gallery and to high school art students. Self-reported questionnaires generated data in subjective experience and learning outcomes. Health literacy was evaluated via voluntary gallery viewer and school student response surveys post-exhibition exposure. Exhibition surveys revealed 96.9% of gallery observers had learnt something new about illness or injury. High school students found the activity had improved (42%) or somewhat improved (38%) their understanding of illness and injury. Our findings suggest patient/caregiver narratives and visual art are equitable and effectual modalities for health service organizations to facilitate, affective and experiential learning, and improve health literacy within the community.

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Journal of Health Communication

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© 2025 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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This publication has been entered in Griffith Research Online as an advance online version.

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Beck, T; Giese, S; Khoo, TK, Visual Art and Medical Narratives as Universal Connectors in Health Communication: An Exploratory Study, Journal of Health Communication, 2025

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