The power of a storytelling sentence

When it comes to community health improvement, we often find ourselves in situations where we need to tell a compelling story. To name just a few:

We need to convey the impact and value of a particular health issue to a policymaker so they are motivated to write or pass legislation that would help address it.

We need to share the impact a policy or program is having with our funders and communities so they are inspired to help sustain it.

We need to share data from a community survey so community partners understand the top health-related needs community members are facing so that their organizations can take action to meet those needs.

PoP Health is knee-deep in each of these types of storytelling at the moment. And we’re often using data - both quantitative and qualitative - to tell these stories. We typically have a LOT of data - thankfully we work with amazing analysts who can synthesize this data into powerful, digestible visualizations.

But visualizations only tell a story if you can interpret them effectively.

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate deeply is the immense power of a storytelling sentence.

Take a data visualization and ask yourself, what do I want the person seeing this to takeaway from this?

And then write that down as simply and briefly as you can.

That’s your storytelling sentence.

Maybe it’s the title of your graph or visual, maybe it’s a summary sentence you place to the side or below.

It sounds so simple but it’s amazing how often we skip this step. This happens a lot especially with data dashboards.

You might build a high-quality, dynamic data dashboard. But will a community member or community partner seeing that dashboard know at first glance what they should be taking away from it? If you add those storytelling sentences, they will!

So this is a call to tell your story. Don’t leave it to chance or someone else’s interpretation. Don't assume the numbers speak for themselves. It's your story - so, tell it!

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Too many partners, too little time, one nifty tool

Public health problems live at the intersection of many different sectors and issues.

You can’t help kids in schools do and feel better without also making sure their teachers are well, that school policies don’t kick them out of class, that their communities are safe, and so on.

So any community health improvement effort worth its salt is going to involve multiple components led by multiple partners.

But it can be really hard for those involved in a joint effort to truly understand the work of other partners. Heck, as anyone who has worked at a large corporation or agency can attest to, it's really hard to understand the work of different departments and teams within the same organization, let alone partner organizations!

Yes, we have logic models and summary descriptions and annual reports, but we often don't have the time to read those things and even when we do, they often fail to give us a true understanding of how the work looks, sounds, and feels on the ground where it's happening.
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We were grappling with just this problem as part of a multi-partner effort to help kids in DC schools thrive. We were bringing various partners together for an in-person convening and many of them had expressed a desire to know more about the activities others were leading. How could we create the space for this without taking up the entire day and while keeping things engaging and interesting?
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One of my colleagues on the project suggested using the Ignite Talks format - “20 slides, 15 seconds a slide, 5 minutes on stage, just you and the audience”. The emphasis in this format is on highly visual slides with interesting imagery. It’s similar to the PechaKucha format, which originated in Japan, and involves 20 slides, each for 20 seconds.

We were a little worried about asking our partners to put together a new presentation just for this convening, but decided it was worth the risk.

And it definitely was! We used these talks to open our convening and it was lively, engaging, interesting, and everyone learned a lot about the different elements of this joint effort we were engaging in.

• By emphasizing visuals, we got to see what the work looked like in action.

• By forcing everyone into a new presentation format, we escaped the boilerplate slides and explanations we otherwise would have gotten.

• Perhaps most surprisingly, by providing a tiny bit of extra structure (“20 slides, 15 seconds each” - instead of just saying “no more than 5 minutes, please”), we actually had everyone stay within the time limit - every single person. (Who else has tried the “no more than X minutes, please” route before, only to find that no one listened to you? Turns out, a little extra structure is the answer!)

All in all, it was a wonderful experience, and one I’ll be looking for opportunities to replicate in other settings and with other groups! I think it’s a great tool for community coalitions and collaboratives to have in their pocket - if you use it, please share how it goes, and if you have questions about how we used it, please reach out.

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