What can comic art about illness and health care offer patients and families as they navigate health challenges? This month on Ethics Talk, we discuss why comic art is a unique and powerful medium for communicating about difficult and emotional encounters with illness and health care.

Decision making in health care demands that we balance multiple considerations, like quality of life, statistics, and how different options could affect others. Dr Brian Zikmund-Fisher shares his own experience as a patient and explains how decision science can help us navigate ethically complex health decisions.  

Undocumented patients are a vulnerable population, since they often lack access to health insurance and can be afraid to present for care. This month on Ethics Talk, we discuss challenges in caring for undocumented patients with Dr. Mark Kuczewski, Scott Schweikart, and Dr. Nancy Berlinger.

Lloyd Duplechan joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article: “How Health Care Organizations Can Be Stewardship Leaders.”

Elina E. Pliakos and Dr Ankur Pandya join Ethics Talk to discuss how economic decision modeling and value analyses can help reduce waste in health care spending and improve patient care.

Drs David D. Kim and Anirban Basu join Ethics Talk to discuss their article: "How Does Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Inform Health Care Decisions?"

Dr Whitney Riley Linsenmeyer joins Ethics Talk to discuss her article, coauthored with Dr Sarah Garwood: “Patient-Centered Approaches to Using BMI to Evaluate Gender-Affirming Surgery Eligibility.”

Professor Martin Bricknell joins Ethics Talk to discuss his article, coauthored with Professors David Whetham, Richard Sullivan, and Peter Mahoney: “How Should Access to Military Health Care Facilities Be Controlled in Conflict?”

This month theme issue editor, Trahern Jones, a fourth-year student at Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota, spoke with Dr. Edward Laskowski about the use of performance-enhancing drugs and substances among athletes today.

Sometimes, life-saving treatments have serious negative consequences. This month, AMA Journal of Ethics digital editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux discusses strategies for communicating about iatrogenic outcomes with Dr. Robert Nelson, a senior pediatric ethicist with the Food and Drug Administration, with a particular focus on how to enlist parents as allies in high-stress pediatric cases.