Browse and fill a basket without an account. You must sign in as a member before you can check out.
Graphic communication for children and medical writing
What it covers
Best Practices for Communicating Clinical Research to Children: Using Age-appropriate Language and Creative Media Approaches in Paediatric Trials
Karen Hinkle
This presentation will explore evidence-based approaches to communicating clinical research information to children through age-appropriate language and creative media. It will summarize the best practices to optimise paediatric trial participant understanding, highlighting research on comics, narrative storytelling, video, and other interactive formats. Examples will illustrate how simple but clear language and creative media can support the explanation of study procedures, randomization, placebo, timelines, and results to children. The presentation will also consider how communication needs differ across developmental stages, from visual-first approaches for younger children to comics for school-age children and more detailed digital formats for adolescents. Finally, it will highlight the value of co-creation with children and families and provide practical design principles that medical writers can apply when developing assent forms, lay summaries, and other paediatric research materials.
Illustrating Hope: Storytelling as Advocacy for Children with Rare Pediatric Cancer
Ana Pataki
Facing a rare pediatric cancer, families step into an unfamiliar realm of wizards, dragons, and magic potions: the language of medicine. Using an epic fantasy lens and personal caregiving experience, this session explores how storytelling and graphic communication transform clinical complexity into hope, and how medical writers and patients can become fellow travellers, co-creating materials that inform and empower children and their families.
In 2017, our family received a diagnosis of Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, which set in motion a trajectory that moved through treatment completion in 2019, into structured engagement with the rare disease ecosystem, and ultimately toward the intersection of patient experience and regulatory science.
That trajectory included the EURORDIS Winter School on Scientific Innovation and Translational Research (2020) and the founding of the patient association Bromologos, a regional patient community organized around phenylketonuria (2021).
Then came the launch of Rare and Share, a podcast on the lived experience of rare disease (2022), and completion of the EUPATI Patient Expert Training Programme (2024). One further personal milestone was the establishment of Empowera Consulting as a strategic communications practice (June 2025), followed by appointment to the EUPATI Faculty Committee (October 2025).
Gathering data and lived experience along the way became the main motivation to enrol in PhD studies in Sociology, aiming to draw wider public attention and scientific weight to how a rare diagnosis shapes the socio-economic dynamics of a family.
Patients bring their own experience, and different capacities to understand and use the information available to them. It is our shared responsibility to make writing and communication understandable to both children and parents, and useful during and after treatment. It is, in a sense, the secret code shared by all the wizards and sorcerers of medical writing.
Use of Visual Aids in Medical Writing: A Powerful Tool for Paediatric Communication
Janaine Prata
Visual communication presents main ideas, information, and data through visual elements. This can make messages easier to understand and more relatable to the audience. Especially in medical communication, which is often full of technical terms and complex language, health information can become overwhelming. Therefore, using different tools, such as visual aids, can help make medical information more accessible.
In this presentation, Janaine will discuss how images and graphs can be used to explain medical conditions to children. Importantly, she will also explore how creativity and simple associations can transform medical and scientific knowledge into fun visual storytelling, including:
· Using everyday objects as illustrations to explain medical conditions, for example, using the peel of an orange to explain the meninges in meningitis.
· Incorporating fairy tales, where a princess might become sick from an allergy, and her journey can help children understand symptoms and treatments.
Lisa Chamberlain James (Moderator)
Janaine is a former dentist with a PhD in Pharmacology and an extensive background in preclinical and clinical research. She is passionate about using plain language and visual aids to turn complex scientific and medical information into clear and relatable messages for diverse audiences, including children. Following this passion, she created the glossary “A to Z Health for Kids,” where she explains medical topics for each letter of the alphabet in a fun and kid-friendly way for paediatric audiences. Currently, she is Chair of the Visual Communication SIG at EMWA and works as a freelance medical writer.
Karen L. Hinkle, Ph.D., is a medical writer at Boehringer Ingelheim who specializes in transforming complex clinical trial information into clear, meaningful, and accessible communications for patients and the public. Drawing on her scientific training, teaching experience, and expertise in plain language, she develops patient-facing materials that support understanding, informed decision-making, and greater transparency throughout the clinical research journey.
Karen earned her Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of Michigan and began her career as a biology professor, laboratory research mentor, and academic leader. These roles shaped her ability to translate complex scientific concepts without losing accuracy or meaning and sparked her enduring commitment to making science understandable to diverse audiences. She further strengthened this expertise by earning a Plain Language Certificate from Simon Fraser University.
As a member of the Lay Language & New Media medical writing team, Karen leads the development of lay protocol synopses, lay summaries of clinical trial results, brief summaries, informed consent forms, and other patient-facing trial communications. She brings a patient-centered perspective to each project, combining scientific rigor, health literacy principles, and thoughtful content design to ensure that essential information is not only available, but genuinely understandable and useful.
Karen is especially passionate about co-creating materials with patients. By incorporating patient perspectives, lived experience, and direct feedback, she helps teams identify where traditional clinical research language creates barriers and convert those insights into practical improvements.
Ana Pataki is a patient advocate and a PhD student in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Novi Sad.
She is the founder of Empowera Consulting, a boutique agency focused on strategic consulting in healthcare and civil society capacity-building.
Her professional work centres on patient advocacy, with a particular focus on rare diseases and paediatric cancer.
Together with her husband, Ana co-created the podcast “Rare and Share”; a platform for sharing the personal stories of patients living with rare diseases, as well as the experiences of their families (in Serbian).
Ana serves as the project coordinator at Lil' Brave One – Hrabriša, a nonprofit organisation in Serbia that supports children with rare neurotransmitter disorders and their families.
Ana participated in the EUPATI Patient Expert Training Programme as a trainee in Cohort 7 (2024). Following her training, she joined the EUPATI Faculty Committee, contributing her perspective as a practising patient advocate.
In this capacity, she advises on the practical application of knowledge and skills gained through the programme.
Lisa is a Senior Partner and CEO of Trilogy Writing & Consulting Ltd. Aside from management activities, she leads client projects, with extensive experience in a
variety of documents. Lisa has a special interest in writing for the general public and in patient information. Following a PhD and post doc. in Pathology at Cambridge,
Lisa began her medical writing career in 2000. Since then she has also been involved in the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) as a member of the Educational Committee, mentor, leader, and assessor of workshops, and teaches and reviews
workshops for the American Medical Writers Association. Lisa holds an EMWA professional development certificate, is a member of TOPRA, DIA, and PIPA, initiated the EMWA PV Special Interest Group, is chair of the Geoff Hall Scholarship
Committee, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine.
Sign in to check out
You can browse and fill a basket without an account. Sign in here to complete checkout — you stay on this page.
Reset your password
We will email a reset link. This page stays open.
Booking is for EMWA members
You are signed in, but this account does not have an active membership. You can keep browsing. Join EMWA to book — we will not send you away automatically.
Registration fee first
The conference registration fee (€50) must be in your basket before any session can be added. It is one off and covers the opening session and the plenary.
Terms and conditions
Changes to registration
Changes may be made to workshop or seminar choices after booking (that is, a cancellation of one workshop or seminar choice and replacement by another), for an administrative fee of €27, plus any difference in price between the choice of workshops or seminars. Workshops, seminars and lunchtime sponsored sessions may be added to your original registration (subject to availability) at any time, without an administrative fee by contacting info@emwa.org. All changes are subject to availability.
Cancellation of attendance
If you wish to cancel your attendance at the conference, a refund, minus an administration fee of €162, will be made provided your cancellation is made in writing to EMWA head office before 20 October 2026. No refunds will be made after this date.
Payments
Invoices must be settled by bank transfer in Euro, or paid by card through Stripe. All fees are payable in advance. Full payment is due by 30 October 2026. If payment has not been received, EMWA reserves the right to request payment and cancel registration.