The invisible persistence of pain
Authors: Rita Giordano
Read the closeread article: The invisible persistence of pain
Reproducible repo: GitHub - ritagior/chronic_pain
Abstract
Chronic pain is a pain that last for more than three months. Who suffers from chronic pain can have major issue in their life. With this data story, I want to let people aware of what chronic pain is and how it can affect people. The tangle of brambles represents the pain, indicating the persistence of pain. Chronic pain is the most underestimated healthcare problem. The data from the Public Health of England of 2021 shows the percentage of people who have chronic pain.
Full Description
This project aims to make people aware of what chronic pain is and how difficult it can be for people who have it.
At first, users will see a tangle of brambles representing the pain. While scrolling, the text will appear in the narrative sidebar, highlighting the emotional part of the pain and not only the physical part. The tangle of bramble may help users experience the emotional side of pain.
The image of the tangle bramble remains, indicating the persistence of pain for people suffering from chronic pain. They can learn that chronic pain can last more than three months. After that, a globe will appear with the text that chronic pain is the most underestimated healthcare problem. Next, using the data from the Public Health of England, I show that one out of three people suffer from chronic pain with a donut chart. The chart shows how many people in England have chronic pain. The percentage is shown in orange. In the next block, there is an animation of what acute pain is. The animation shows a human body with a signal that goes from the harm to the brain. The brain activates a bell that sends a signal to warn us of the danger. After in the sidebar there is the text that this is acute pain. Now it starts to explain how our brain works when we suffer from chronic pain. The animation of chronic pain shows a bell continuously ringing, the alarm system is on, and we feel the pain also if there is no a dander. A gray waffle chart shows if 100 people have chronic pain. Where each square is a person. During scrolling, the waffle chart begins to change color. The first 65 squares are filled in, indicating that 65 people have pain in one area of their body. Then 21 have pain in two areas of their body and 14 have pain in three or more areas of their body.
The last block shows a hibiscus flower. The hibiscus is a flower that can live for 24 hours. So at the end, there is a message of hope that also if people live with chronic pain, there will be some moment when they can feel better.
I made a globe, donut, and waffle chart with the packages {ggplot2}, {sf}, {rrnaturalearth}, {rnaturalearthdata} and {waffle}.
I took a picture of a bramble from my garden and changed it using affinity photo. The animation of acute and chronic pain are original illustrations made by be, which were then transformed into a GIF. The final image of the hibiscus is an original painting that I created last summer from flowers in my garden.