Build Narrative Power

How public health departments can shape and influence narratives for a transformed, equitable future

Narratives are fundamental to the way we make sense of the world and imagine the future. Public health practitioners can build and use narrative power to influence worldviews — including “common sense” beliefs about how the world operates, what our problems are, and how we solve them. When we shift the narrative, we change what is possible, opening up new pathways to achieve health equity and racial justice.

For example, when we shift the narrative about what creates health by saying that social, economic, and environmental factors are the primary drivers of health rather than individual behavior choices, public health departments have more power to advance structural solutions to improve community health.

Public health’s narrative power should be built in partnership with groups working to build community power and make structural changes. This requires:

• Understanding power and how to build and wield it
• Discerning what values hinder or advance health equity and racial justice
• Identifying the core values being communicated in media, data reports, policies, and practices
• Calling out harmful narratives and replacing them with narratives that advance equity and justice

Action Steps health departments can take to build narrative power:

• Learn about narrative with your team through this 30-minute orientation to narrative and the resources below
• Learn to identify dominant narratives that are harmful to health equity and racial justice goals, which often favor individualism, free market solutions, and anti-government sentiment, all of which appeal to existing oppressive systems
• Use your platforms, authority, and voice to explicitly name the harmful dominant narratives in a message or story and how they perpetuate health inequities
• Develop new transformative narratives with your team and partners (especially community power-building organizations) that uplift the values and worldviews you want to elevate throughout your work
• Apply and disseminate transformative narratives throughout all areas of your public health work, contrasting dominant and transformative narratives in your messaging and offering a choice between them
• Support community organizing groups who want to incorporate a health equity narrative — which can be one of the most convincing and mobilizing frames for a wide range of audiences — in their campaigns for social justice