Telling stories about getting results in global health
Sharing your Results in Global Health Through Stories
In the last blog, I mentioned the main three types of stories I use in my work. They are personal, global and results stories. This week I am going to focus on Results Stories. Here I have five topics in my Storytelling folder:
- Health system management stories: to make the point that every country needs a well-organized health system that delivers quality healthcare consistently and efficiently.
- Public health stories: to make a point about how public health programs such as disease prevention and control, maternal or child health, family planning, etc. should work.
- Professional Career Principles Stories: to make the point about career decisions and how to make them before taking action. For example, I tell stories about why I advocate for the Principles of the Paris Declaration and Human Rights, particularly the Right to Health and the Right to Development. I also tell stories that demonstrate my “project-program-system” principle that every global health project must improve the country’s programs, before improving how the health system works, so results can be sustained after the project ends.
- Warning stories: Depending on how you tell these stories, they can serve as an example of what to do, or a warning about what not to do. My favorite warning story are those that explain why you need to do something like work to achieve Universal Healthcare.
- Topic Stories: These stories make a technical point and lead to ACTION
- Ebola prevention and control
- MCH
- FP/RH
- Malaria
- HIV
- Pharmaceutical Supplies stories
- Organization development stories
- Better health teams
It does not really matter how you organize your stories, but that you do organize them and use them every day. It will become the strategy to communicate complex points in a way that helps your colleagues, counterparts and all stakeholders understand what you do, it will assist with collaboration, and it will help them take action.
I look forward to learning more about your stories and how you use them. Contact me by email or social media to share your experiences.
To learn more, listen to the Storytelling Podcast series on iTunes or visit our website.
