Critical Design for Overdose Response: Graphic Medicine as a Tool to Address Stigma

This paper examines the role of graphic medicine as a critical design tool that should be used in harm reduction messaging, focusing on its capacity to address barriers to opioid overdose response. Through three case studies, we illustrate how visual storytelling in the form of comics, animation, and other graphic elements can encourage empathy, reduce stigma, and improve understanding of overdose interventions, particularly naloxone administration. Barriers to effective overdose response include stigma, fear, mistrust, limited knowledge, and poor access to lifesaving tools. Stigma—both societal and internalized—remains one of the most persistent and hardest barriers for effective overdose response. In response, design researchers and practitioners have explored communication methods to reshape public and professional discourse. By drawing on critical design tools in a cross-disciplinary way, this paper situates comics and animation within a broader effort to engage communities, shift narratives, and build more inclusive, compassionate approaches to opioid overdose prevention.