Stories

By Elizabeth Green, Founder and CEO of Civic News Company, the publisher of nonprofit newsrooms Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat. 

When we launched Healthbeat last year, we set out to fill a serious information gap: the lack of coverage about America’s public health system and the forces that affect it. Not just health care, but the systems of prevention all around us, including infectious disease control, vaccines, and pandemic preparedness. We would engage trusted messengers, with the goal of strengthening community connections with health policy, science, and journalism in the wake of COVID-19. At that point, the biggest problem on our minds was misinformation and a lack of media attention on the shortcomings of our collective readiness for a worldwide health emergency.

Fast-forward to today and the story has gotten even bigger.

As the federal government takes a step back from public health, implementing major staffing cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, state and local governments will have a much greater role in providing the tools that keep communities healthy, with limited capacity. Many Americans’ experience of their own health resources could change dramatically. When there is no national safety net, local officials and community leaders will have to rely on, and learn from, each other.

“In the United States, public health will succeed only if communities, professionals, and civic leaders across all 50 states organize now to preserve evidence, protect science, and create systems that endure beyond political cycles,” Jay K. Varma, a former New York City public health official, wrote recently in Healthbeat.

Civic science journalism can be a powerful way to meet this moment. At Civic News Company, which publishes Chalkbeat and Votebeat alongside Healthbeat, our target audience is the people who are most involved in the civic life of their community, people who are actively looking for trusted information to guide them. We call them “Civic Catalysts.” An analysis we did in partnership with EMBOLD Research suggests there are 51 million Americans doing this work every day, striving to improve student achievement in schools, ensure fair election administration, and advance public health policies that promote thriving communities.

Elevating the voices of those who are doing the often invisible work of keeping a community healthy can cut through the partisan noise and help people understand what is at stake. These are the people who translate data into action, who connect research to the streets, and who make complex systems understandable and accountable. Our “‘Aha’ Moments in Public Health” storytelling events bring together scientists, social workers, health workers, and others in New York and Atlanta to share the experiences that drove home for them why their work matters – and why they keep going.

Research has shown that storytelling closes the distance between people and science. And we know as journalists and civic scientists that behind every data point, every policy, every initiative, there are human moments of clarity, heartbreak, hope, and resolve that can educate, inspire, and build bridges.

Brandon Kenemer, a data expert who served at the CDC for nine years, described one “aha” moment as the realization that scientists don’t know everything, that scientific work is a journey of discovery in partnership with others. Imagine how that baseline understanding among the general public could have elevated the dialogue around evolving Covid mitigation practices.

Stories have power. At this time of deep division, we hope you will join us in turning to storytelling to help bridge science, democracy, and community well-being in a way that fosters trust and dialogue, and can help society face the challenges to come.

This letter is excerpted from the December 2025 Civic Science Series newsletter.