Comic: West Side churches are fighting high blood pressure to save Black lives

Black Chicagoans have a life expectancy of nine years less than other Chicago residents, A big factor is uncontrolled high blood pressure, which is significantly more prevalent in Chicago’s African American population than among other groups.

Here, Josh Neufeld uses the form of comics journalism to tell the story of how the Alive Faith Network coalition of churches on the West Side are working with Rush University Medical Center to attack this major public health problem.

His comic, titled “Closing the gap,” draws on research published by the journal Prevention Science along with additional sources of information — including interviews with five of the people involved in this effort: Elizabeth “Beth” Lynch, LaDawne Jenkins, Steve Epting Sr., Teresa Berumen and Anthony Hixson.

All five appear as characters in the comic, which describes an innovative community health worker intervention aimed at reducing blood pressure among the congregants of several area churches.

For clarity, the characters’ speech balloon quotes that are shaded in light pink come directly from their interviews with Neufeld. The white speech balloons represent indirect quotes — such as when one person recalled what another person said during a community health visit. The text in yellow caption boxes represents the narrative.

This piece adds to the growing field of graphic medicine, which uses comics as a tool to tell true stories about health care experiences and to get t the heart of complex medical topics in an easy-to-understand fashion.

This comic is co-published under a Creative Commons license with The Journalist’s Resource, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy that commissioned the work.