Scrooge's Shadow: The Ghost of Deprivation and Health

Yu Liu ( s2327323 )
2023/12/06

Catalogue

  • Data
    • Dataset & Challenge
    • Variables selected
  • Program
    • Patterns found in 2 Figures
  • Communicate
    • Key Concepts
    • Inspiration & Adaption
    • Prototype
    • Storytelling
    • Data Literacy
    • What’s Left
    • Reference

Dataset & Challenge

NHS Medical Data

  • Data Exploration Completed
  • Coarse Granularity, not suitable for drawing conclusions
  • Serve as a starting point to present certain phenomena and call for possible action

Challenge

The challenge is to interpret NHS palliative care data, highlighting how health and deprivation disparities affect end-of-life care. Despite data limitations, this project aims to raise awareness through data comics, questioning how deprivation impacts health choices and locations of passing, especially in palliative scenarios.

Variables selected

  • Disease Types: Cancer, Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Dementia
  • Deprivation Levels: 1 to 5 (Higher number indicates greater poverty)
    Converted to Wealth Grade for better intuitive understanding
  • Death Locations: Care Home, Hospice, Hospital, Home

Given the constraints of the dataset, we are unable to draw definitive conclusions; instead, we present intriguing patterns for readers to contemplate.

Patterns 1: Deprivation Levels X Disease Types

Patterns 2: Deprivation Levels X Death Locations

Key Concepts

Rationale

Raise awareness about health and deprivation disparities.

  • Who cares: People from all walks of life.
  • Why care: The wealth gap profoundly affects daily life, and death is inevitable for all.
  • What to do: Distribute data comics at a Christmas market.

Take home message

  • Could deprivation significantly affect certain aspects of your health?
  • Might deprivation limit your medical choices and potentially influence where you might pass away?

Inspiration & Adaption

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· Inspiration: Pocket-sized booklet inspired by info+.
· Communication: Capitalizing on the Christmas season.

· Adaptation: British Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Scrooge.
· Theme: Emphasizing wealth and poverty gaps.
· Protagonist: Ebenezer Scrooge from the Christmas Carol.
· Supporting Characters: Ghosts representing four types of diseases.

Prototype

  • Medium: A pocket-sized booklet, crafted by folding an A4 sheet into eight sections, featuring data comics. demo

Storytelling

  • Structure: 16 pages in total, printed on both sides of 8 sections, comprising: 2 cover pages + 2 for introduction and engagement + 4 for story development + 2 for the climax + 2 for conclusion + 2 for a call to action + 2 for advertisements(the horizontal long banner)
  • Narrative: The Drill-Down Story structure is ideal for this data comic, starting with a health and wealth overview, then delving into disease specifics and socio-economic impacts, mirroring Scrooge's enlightening journey and prompting reader engagement and action.
  • Plot: [See Next Page. Needs further refinement!]

Plot

  • Introduction and Engagement (2 pages): Introduce Ebenezer Scrooge as a character revisited by the Ghosts of Healthcare, each representing the four types of diseases: Cancer, Cardiovascular, Dementia, and Respiratory. The ghosts will show him patterns of disease prevalence and death in relation to wealth grades, sparking his curiosity.
  • Story Development (4 pages): Scrooge is taken on a journey through the lives of individuals across different wealth grades, witnessing firsthand how wealth affects their health outcomes and end-of-life care options. With each ghost, a different aspect of the data is explored—Cancer and Respiratory diseases in the less wealthy, Dementia among the wealthy, and the consistent spread of Cardiovascular disease across all grades.
  • Climax (2 pages): The Ghost of Dementia reveals a stark contrast in the patterns of death, highlighting the increased prevalence of dementia-related deaths with higher wealth grades and the implications of access to care homes and hospices. This moment of revelation is Scrooge’s turning point, where he realizes the depth of health inequality.
  • Conclusion (2 pages): Scrooge is now fully aware of the deprivation and health inequality. He reflects on the data and understands the magnitude of the issue, feeling a personal responsibility to take action.
  • Call to Action (2 pages): Inspired by what he’s learned, Scrooge addresses the reader directly, urging them to consider how deprivation might affect their health and end-of-life choices. He advocates for greater awareness and support for healthcare equality.

Data Literacy

  • Wealth Grade (1-5): A scale from 1 to 5 reflecting economic status, where 1 is the least and 5 is the most wealthy, determined by factors like income, assets, and living conditions.
  • Broad Underlying Cause of Death: The main health condition that initiated the sequence of events leading to death, rather than the immediate cause.
  • Place of Death (Care home, Home, Hospice, Hospital): The setting where a person dies, which can indicate the level of medical care they were receiving: care home for residential care, home for personal or minimal care, hospice for palliative end-of-life care, and hospital for active medical treatment.
  • Health Inequality: Variations in health conditions and access to care among different socioeconomic groups.

What's Left

This project blends a Christmas story with data storytelling to highlight health disparities, focusing on engaging content creation and strategic distribution. Our upcoming steps involve:

  • Refining the Storytelling: Ensuring that data is the central component of the comic, making it both informative and engaging.
  • Testing Data Literacy: Presenting a prototype to a varied audience to gather feedback and insights.
  • Improving Design: Selecting a color palette and font style that are more aligned with the theme while ensuring accessibility.
  • Production and Distribution: Finish drawing and plan for the handing-out event.

Reference

[1]Benjamin Bach, Zezhong Wang, Matteo Farinella, Dave Murray-Rust, and Nathalie Henry Riche. 2018. Design Patterns for Data Comics. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-12.
[2]Zezhong Wang, Hugo Romat, Fanny Chevalier, Nathalie Henry Riche, Dave Murray-Rust, and Benjamin Bach. 2021. Interactive Data Comics. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 28, No. 1, 944-954. IEEE.
[3]Zezhong Wang, Lovisa Sundin, Dave Murray-Rust, and Benjamin Bach. 2020. Cheat Sheets for Data Visualization Techniques. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1-13.
[4]Magdalena Boucher, Benjamin Bach, Christina Stoiber, Zezhong Wang, and Wolfgang Aigner. 2023. Educational Data Comics: What can Comics do for Education in Visualization? OSF Preprints.
[5]Xingyu Lan, Yanqiu Wu, and Nan Cao. 2023. Affective Visualization Design: Leveraging the Emotional Impact of Data. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 1-11. DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3327385.

Thank You

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