‘Imparting Messages for the Greater Good’.
Trained in health education, School of Public Health alum Whit Taylor (SPH’12) is passionate about conveying complex health information to the public in a digestible way. Now, she has turned what originated as a hobby into a powerful and effective medium for highlighting critical public health issues.
Founder of Whit Taylor Comics, Taylor is a New Jersey-based cartoonist, comics editor, and writer who has embraced the resurgent fields of comic journalism and graphic medicine to share personal, historical, and evidence-based knowledge about public health challenges.
“Using visuals to appeal to people is very effective, and the reason I like comics is the same reason I like public health—it’s a way of communicating on a larger scale to people and imparting messages for the greater good, to impact health in a positive way,” Taylor says.
She adds that communicating about public health is especially important many people don’t know what public health or how it affects the general public. “I want to give people context for public health history, and a lot of the things I write about in my comics originate from my studies at SPH,” she says.
From personal reflections on her struggles with anxiety and depression, to educational commentary on the threat of pandemics, Taylor’s works span a variety of informative and relatable topics. Her comics have also spotlighted the Food and Drug Administration and its lack of regulation, as well as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and its impact on the African American community’s trust of healthcare workers. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, The Nib, and PEN Illustrated, and won her a Glyph Comic Rising Star Award.
Taylor says she receives a lot of positive feedback from readers who say her comics bring awareness and insight to issues they didn’t understand or were not aware of before they read her work.
“These days we’re bombarded with articles and studies that are difficult to evaluate if you don’t have a background in data,” Taylor says. “My goal is to help people understand complicated subjects, and to also help them feel good about who they are and what they’re experiencing.”
Whit Taylor is taking over the SPH Instagram account from June 24 through 28. Follow along at Instagram.com/BUSPH/ and with the hashtag #BUSPHSummer19.