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  • About
    • About
    • What is Public Interest Communications?
    • Our Team
    • Theories We Use
    • What We’ve Shared
    • Center Updates
    • Programs & Affiliates
      • frank gathering
      • The Research Prize in Public Interest Communications
      • Journal of Public Interest Communications
      • UF Programs
    • Contact Us
  • Our Services
    • Strategy Consulting
    • Issue Research
    • Training – Frameworks and Custom
  • Frameworks & Resources
  • Training
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CASE STUDY: Bridging the Gap

The Challenge:

The University of Chicago serves as the national program office for Bridging the Gap, a Merck Foundation initiative that brings together the health care sector with other sectors to promote improvements in diabetes care. The university supports the national program efforts of the grantee organizations, providing leadership in building the public/private partnership. The program directors contacted the Center when they wanted to develop a video storytelling project that could be used to demonstrate the impacts of the grant. The national team recognized the need to first train grantees how to tell better their stories before they could begin the video project and contacted the Center for our expertise.

What We Did:

The Center conducted a pre-survey to help identify the training needs of the grantees and used the survey insights to refine the training session.

Across multiple disciplines, research tells us that the most effective way to influence belief and behavior change is to adopt a storytelling approach to strategic communication. Many organizations believe they are telling stories or believe that leading with data will change minds and behaviors. But often, these are simply messages or vignettes, and are about the organization, not the mission, and can feed into a master narrative that people are either tired of hearing or that is doing more harm than good.

We conducted a one-day, story building workshop, which we customized to feature examples from the health care industry to best resonate with their work.

Results of a post-workshop evaluation showed participants had a much better understanding of how to build stories that resonated with their specific communities. Coaches worked one-on-one with grantees in the months following the workshop, helping them define and refine their stories for the video projects.

To discuss how the Center can help your organization, contact us. 

More of our work
  • Things I learned from YouTube stars, ex-extremists, and storytellers about fighting hate
  • Communicating the Complexity of Displacement in a Changing Climate
  • Building the Field of Public Interest Communications
  • The Science of Belief: Move Beyond “Us” and “Them” to “We”
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How We Help – Case Studies
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    Covering immigration in local news—an exploration by Define American
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    Science-based communication strategy on COVID for the UN Verified Initiative
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    Innovation Service of UNHCR: the UN Refugee Agency

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Center for Public Interest Communications
PO Box 118400
Gainesville, FL 32611-8400

An auxiliary unit of the College of Journalism and Communications

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The Center for Public Interest Communications, the first of its kind in the nation, is designed to study, test and apply the science of strategic communication for social change. We are based at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.

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