Health

Health matters to all of us, but people tend to think about it in narrow, stigmatizing, and fatalistic ways. Framing can help widen the lens.

Too often, factors and circumstances that shape our health are devalued or ignored. The public, elected officials, and some health providers tend to focus narrowly on lifestyles and behaviors.

Language can entrench and spread misconceptions—or it can unlock alternative ideas and perspectives.

Explore these studies to find frames that help explain the social determinants of health and health equity.

Featured Work

Framing Resource

Talking about Health Equity

Here are three sample definitions that use the phrases “fair and full” or “fair and just,” which can complement or replace the word equity.

Toolkit

Boosting Public Discourse: Reframing Childhood Immunization

Find guidance and resources to advocate for expanding access to childhood and adolescent vaccination.

Framing Resource

Explaining the Social Determinants of Health

Here are helpful things to keep in mind when you’re trying to explain why some demographic groups experience better or worse health outcomes than others.

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Report

How Are Advocates Talking about Children’s Issues? An Analysis of Field Communications

This is one of a set of three reports that map the landscape of current discourse and thinking.

Report

Why aren’t kids a policy priority? The cultural mindsets and attitudes that keep kids off the public agenda

This report focuses on American mindsets about kids and how these mindsets limit the effectiveness of advocacy messaging.

Report

What the American Public Thinks About Vaccines and How Framing Can Help. A Literature Review.

As the US is preparing to distribute vaccines across all 50 states to curtail a deadly pandemic, the issue of vaccination is, more than ever, top of mind for many, in the US and globally.

Report

Changing the Childhood Obesity Conversation to Improve Children’s Health

How we talk about child health and obesity matters. Growing evidence shows that where we live and what we earn shapes the options available to us in terms of food and activity.

Report

Reframing Childhood Adversity: Promoting Upstream Approaches

Preventing, identifying, and responding to early adversity is one of the most impactful things we can do to improve our nation’s health and wellbeing – but it can be difficult to build the...

Toolkit

Reframing Children’s Mental Health

Children’s mental health is the result of a complex set of influences, including environments and social conditions and the culture and public policies that shape them. Too often, however,...

Report

Communicating about Physical Activity: Challenges, Opportunities, and Emerging Recommendations

It is easy for messages to get lost in translation when talking about physical activity. There are several barriers to being heard and understood, and a few opportunities to seize.

Report

More Than Just Exercise: Media and Organizational Discourse on Physical Activity

If people recognize the importance of active lifestyles and the policies that enable them, then they are more likely to demand change.

Toolkit

Framing the Foundation of Community Health

A communications toolkit for public health professionals and advocates who want to engage in productive conversations about the value of, and critical need for, cross-sector collaboration

Report

Toxins and Tension: Media and Organizational Discourse about Public Health

In this report, we identify dominant patterns in media coverage and in the communications of public health advocacy, policy, and research organizations. By analyzing how these practices are likely...

Report

Public Health Reaching Across Sectors: Strategies for Communicating Effectively about Public Health and Cross-Sector Collaboration with Professionals from Other Sectors

With support from the de Beaumont Foundation and the Aspen Institute’s Health, Medicine and Society Program, as part of the Public Health Reaching Across Sectors (PHRASES) Initiative, this...

Report

Public Health Reaching Across Sectors: Mapping the Gaps between How Public Health Experts and Leaders in Other Sectors View Public Health and Cross-Sector Collaboration

Overcoming unproductive perceptions of public health held by other sectors requires an effective communications strategy that can foster a fuller understanding of the field of public health and...