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

Only Part of the Story: Media and Organisational Discourse about Health in the United Kingdom

This report identifies how media and advocacy groups in the UK frame health and makes recommendations for advocates.

Report

Reframing Hunger in America

How can we elevate public understanding that hunger in America is widespread – and not just a personal failing?

Report

Strategies for Drawing on the Voices of Women Veterans to Communicate about Mental Health

This Message Brief makes recommendations about how to frame women veterans’ mental health on online materials and in communications campaign collateral.

Report

Communicating about Obesity

People do see many pieces of the obesity puzzle, but they tend to arrange them into a picture of individuals failing to overcome challenging circumstances.

Report

Seeing Upstream: Mapping the Gaps between Expert and Public Understandings of Health in the United Kingdom

This report summarizes expert and public understandings of health in the United Kingdom and “maps the gaps” between them.

Report

Telling a Story of Safety: Media and Organizational Discourse on Patient Safety

This report draws on research to describe how media and organizations shape public understanding of patient safety.

Report

Safety Is More than Caring: Mapping the Gaps between Expert, Public, and Health Care Professional Understandings of Patient Safety

This report summarizes how members of the public and health care professionals think about and understand patient safety.

Report

Media and Organizational Discourse on Patient Safety

This report summarizes how advocacy groups and the news media frame the issue of patient safety in news coverage and organizational materials.

Report

Getting Stories to Stick: The Shape of Public Discourse on Oral Health

Building public support—and ultimately changing oral health care policies—requires that we tell a new story.

Report

Beyond Awareness of Stigma: Moving Public Understanding to the Next Level

This report compares expert and public views of issues related to mental health and outlines the differences between them.

Report

Public Discourse on Oral Health

This systematic content analysis explores how the news media and advocacy organizations frame oral health.

Toolkit

Reframing Oral Health

To elevate oral health issues, experts, advocates, and communications professionals need framing strategies that have the power to dislodge unproductive patterns of thinking and spark new, more...