A conversation with June Han

by Jon Scaccia March 11, 2025

After a break following the US election while our heads kept spinning, we’re happy to bring back our conversation with researchers and practitioners working to further health and wellness.

June Han is a Senior Recent Consultant at ORS Impact. With more than 20 years of experience doing applied research, she is a sociologist who specializes in qualitative research. As a researcher, she has worked in education, criminal justice, and race and policy and has experience in academic, advocacy, nonprofit, and consulting settings. At ORS Impact, she serves as a learning, evaluation, and thought partner to social change organizations that seek to make a greater impact.

She spoke with us via email about narrative change and, as a bonus, provided extensive links and citations to dig into.

You’ve conducted research on narrative change, including a review for the Gates Foundation. What are the key indicators of success when measuring whether a public health narrative is shifting in a meaningful way?

There are a few key categories of indicators for narrative change, but within those categories, there are many possible options for indicators of success when measuring whether a public health narrative is shifting in a meaningful way. In terms of indicator selection, it depends on what it is you’re trying to measure, and for organizations, there are factors to consider such as capacity and resources, technical capability, and data availability and quality. For narrative change, one key area is to assess media and public discourse. One option would be, for example, to look at whether narratives related to the social determinants of health are reported on or mentioned in various forms of media. For print and digital media, one could look at the number of articles that support the narrative that health care outcomes are shaped by socioeconomic and environmental factors and see if there are changes over time. For social media, one could look to see if there is a growth in shares, likes, or comments related to this topic. Another key area is to assess whether people’s beliefs, attitudes, or mindsets have shifted, for example around narratives about health as a human right, by tracking changes in attitudes or beliefs through surveys, interviews, or focus groups. If beliefs, attitudes, or mindsets are changing, one may find greater support over time for policies that guarantee access to health care or provide protection against medical bankruptcies. A third key area is to assess whether there are changes in behaviors or actions. For example, for narratives related to health as a collective responsibility and public good, one could see if vaccination rates are increasing or if more people are voting for measures that offer a public option for health care.

At ORS Impact, we also look at systems-level changes in policies, practices, resource flows, and power. Through narrative change, there may be shifts in the allocation of resources and changes in who gets to sit at the table and take part in decision-making processes. For public health, successful narrative change efforts could contribute to new laws and public policies that expand universal health care coverage, which would support narratives about health care as a human right and health as a collective responsibility and public good. In terms of institutional or organizational practices, hospitals and insurers may allocate resources to expand charity care or community benefit allocation if health is increasingly seen as a human right. With greater support at the societal level in the belief that health outcomes are shaped by inequitable systems, there may be shifts in power, with more people from impacted communities who are increasingly engaged and empowered to shape public health decisions and policies that affect them.

For more information, see the ORS Impact publication, Measuring Narrative Change: Understanding Progress and Navigating Complexity.

Successful narrative change isn’t just about shifting public discourse–it’s about changing mindsets, policies, and power structures so that communities that have been historically marginalized and excluded have a real seat at the table in shaping public health decisions.

Public health efforts often rely on data, but data alone isn’t always persuasive. What role does storytelling play in shifting public health narratives, and how can organizations do it effectively?

Stories are an essential part of how we think, feel, and relate to others, and we often use stories to process, remember and make meaning out of our experiences. Storytelling can be a powerful tool for shaping how people understand and make sense of public health issues. While quantitative data can be disputed, depending on how they are presented and used, real stories of people’s lived experiences, which can be a form of qualitative data, may elicit empathy and resonate more deeply. Organizations can learn how to do storytelling more effectively by understanding that stories live in the realm of meaning rather than facts and data. While stories often serve to normalize the status quo and reinforce dominant beliefs and perspectives, they can also be used to contest the status quo and challenge dominant beliefs and perspectives. Stories can be used to shape meaning, build emotions or empathy, and stir people to individual or collective action. For more information about stories and other building blocks of narrative change, see the ORS Impact working paper, Narrative Change Components: Stories, Narratives, Mindsets, Paradigms, and Culture as Part of Cultural and Systems Change.

Marshall Ganz describes public narrative as a leadership practice of translating values into action by motivating others to join you in collective action toward a shared purpose. Narrative seeks to answer the question of why something matters, why we should care, and why we must act, and emotions can be the mechanism through which values motivate or inspire action. Ganz refers to this framework as the story of self, us, and now. The story of self articulates values that define who you are through storytelling, often about lived experience, that aims to connect at an emotional level. The story of us weaves together the shared experiences and values of a larger group or community. The story of now communicates the challenge to those shared experiences and values and serves as the call to action. ORS Impact delves into how this framework and others drive narrative change in our publication, Narrative Change: A Review of Concepts, Frameworks, and Approaches.

With the politicization of DEI and equity efforts, how can public health leaders ensure that the voices of historically marginalized communities remain central to shaping policy and programmatic decisions?

The landscape is shifting at such a fast pace, it’s hard to formulate an answer that won’t be outdated by the time the reader finishes this sentence. There is a growing segment of narrative practitioners who see narratives and narrative change as integral to progressive power building aimed at shifting power to the people most impacted by inequities and building power within communities. Lying at the intersection of narrative change and power building, narrative power is grounded in the belief that narratives that advance freedom, justice, and inclusion need to rise from the ground up by impacted communities that have lived experience with oppression. For more information, see Narrative Power: Accelerating Narrative Change From the Ground Up, which ORS Impact produced in collaboration with the Million Voters Project and Power California.

For the voices of historically marginalized communities to be central in shaping policy and programmatic decisions, public health leaders must move away from marginalization and tokenization and move toward authentic community engagement that is built on trust and deep relationships. To build and share power with communities that have been historically marginalized and excluded, public health leaders can work to ensure that organizational and institutional leadership are reflective of the communities most impacted by inequities. They can work toward building, expanding and sustaining the leadership of grassroots leaders and community members, and they can consistently engage community members in decision-making processes to form and shape policies and organizational priorities and strategies. They can also provide opportunities for grassroots leaders and members to exercise their skills and leadership to achieve shared goals. These strategies and approaches, which are highlighted in a 2024 USC ERI publication, will go a long way toward ensuring that the voices of historically marginalized communities remain central to shaping policy and programmatic decisions.

You’ve worked in education, criminal justice, and social policy. What successful strategies from those fields could be applied to strengthen narrative change efforts in public health?

I’m going to turn this question around and respond by saying there are in fact lessons that other fields can learn from public health when it comes to narrative change efforts. In Funding Narrative Change, the funders who were interviewed for the study mentioned narratives around the social determinants of health as an example of a successful narrative change effort. Starting in 2012, a group of funders invested in narrative work that framed health beyond health care. They introduced and circulated ideas and narratives around the social determinants of health to the extent that this language and way of thinking has become conventional and is now part of public discourse. For example, many people now know about food deserts and unequal access to health care within communities that have been marginalized and excluded that contribute to differences in health outcomes. The social determinants of health is regarded as an example of a narrative that was promoted by funders that successfully shifted the narrative landscape over the course of a decade.

At the same time, with the emergence of narrative power and a desire by some narrative practitioners to have grassroots leaders and community members drive narrative change, there is growing hesitance in some sectors about funders and other organizations imposing narratives that may not resonate in communities. A top-down push for a particular set of messages or frames could come across as overly prescriptive by grantees, grassroots leaders, and community members, which is a lesson to consider in the future in thinking about narrative change efforts in public health.

In public health, as in other fields, narrative change efforts can be strengthened by being clear and focused on the goals, activities, and outcomes. Narrative change is a long-term social change strategy. Too many organizations have not grappled with the question of narrative change to what end? What is the end goal, and what is your theory of how change happens? A resource that can help organizations make sense of how narrative change is related to cultural and systems change and how it can be used as a long-term strategy to achieve social change is one that I mentioned earlier: Narrative Change Components: Stories, Narratives, Mindsets, Paradigms, and Culture as Part of Cultural and Systems Change. Being unclear about the purpose and the short- and long-term goals of narrative change makes strategy development and implementation challenging. At ORS Impact, we are learning, evaluation, and thought partners to social change organizations, and we help organizations accelerate and deepen impact through Theory of Change, measurement, and strategy support.

Don’t Miss Out – Subscribe Now!

Public health needs your voice today. Join thousands of leaders already making a difference. Subscribe for free to This Week in Public Health and receive weekly updates packed with tools to drive change.
🚨 Urgency matters—take action now and share this blog to expand our reach!