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This piece was originally published in the Stanford Innovation Review on January 9, 2025.
How do we get people of all political identities to willingly support social progress without compromising anyone’s values? In September 2024, two months before the American public voted Republicans into control of every branch of the US national government, that question was definitively answered at a private, non-political gathering of philanthropic foundation executives and their communications officers.
The Next Narrative Summit was sponsored and facilitated by BMe Community and leading foundations including Robert Wood Johnson, Bill & Melinda Gates, Annie E. Casey, New Pluralists, Nellie Mae, The Kresge Foundation, New Commonwealth Fund, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Joyce Foundation, Prudential, Best Buy, Omidyar Network, Comcast NBC Universal, and The Communications Network.
Communication in a New Era of Social Change
This essay series, presented in partnership with The Communications Network, will share stories, strategies, and lessons from forward-thinking foundations and nonprofits that have begun evolving the way they think and do communications.
These organizations’ 161 foundation and communications leaders learned how their peers have recently united liberals and conservatives to achieve historic victories on the same issues that traditional appeals are now losing. These new appeals had several commonalities: They define people by aspirations before noting challenges; they replace jargon and fear-triggering with common language and inspiration; and they hold presumed opponents and America accountable without vilifying either. The following examples illustrate the power of next narrative appeals to win civil rights, invest billions for equity, revive educational institutions, and win public support across the political map today.
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In 2023—the same year that the US Supreme Court ruling on Students for Fair Admissions caused philanthropists to reconsider their stance on equity goals or avoid using the term “equity” altogether—Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Minnesota (a “blue state”) became the first US city to raise $1 billion in a single year to support racial equity and carbon neutrality. The effort, led by Tonya Allen of the McKnight Foundation, used a next narrative strategy to rally the GroundBreak Coalition—a group of more than 40 corporate, civic, and philanthropic allies—to not only make fundraising history, but also regard their billion dollars as the downpayment on a $5.3 billion goal.
In May 2022, Michigan (a “swing state”) became the first US state to reopen a historically Black college. The next narrative campaign behind the effort, led by former Nike footwear design executive D’Wayne Edwards, won political support and corporate backing to fund and reopen Pensole Lewis College (PLC). In fact, Edwards has relaunched PLC as the only historically Black college specializing in the design industry.
Some of the most impressive gains may be in “red states.” In 2018, Desmond Meade of the Florida Restoration Rights Coalition led a historic campaign using next narrative appeals that overturned 150-year-old laws—an achievement that Democratic leader and activist Stacy Abrams called “the largest expansion of civil and voting rights in a half-century.” Meade’s appeal restored rights to 1.4 million neighbors in Florida who had served their time for past crimes and thereby earned their right to full citizenship. While Governor Ron Desantis quickly erected administrative barriers to the public will, the campaign overcame that too. Over 5 million Republicans, Democrats, and Independents voted together for historic progress.
Sheena Meade, Desmond Meade’s wife, is meanwhile expanding civil rights across the United States using a similar next narrative stance. Her Clean Slate Initiative received $75 million from The Audacious Project to help states automate the process of expunging criminal records once someone has completed their sentence. Her TED Talk on “How Second Chance Laws Can Transform the Justice System” has been viewed more than 1.1 million times.
Finding a New Narrative Norm
The Next Narrative Summit was three years in the making. In 2021, the communications firm Hattaway Communications researched whether social impact appeals that don’t rely on narratives of crisis, fear, and denigration can effectively engage people. The results were game-changing: The firm found a very large market—one that spans all races, genders, ages, regions, and political identities—for next narrative appeals.
According to Hattaway’s research, 39 million Americans vote, volunteer, donate, and want to achieve goals like racial equality, social justice, and fairness. But they’re fundamentally turned off by progressive stances expressed in jargon that suggest all systems are broken, individuals are powerless, and populations should be defined by their challenges. BMe Community dubbed this next narrative demographic “builders”; 51 percent of this group are Democrats, 22 percent are Independents, and 20 percent are Republicans.
Builders are the kind of people who help their neighbors without asking their political affiliation first. They aren’t prone to protesting but typically help people in their communities before protests erupt, during protests, and after news agencies and protestors leave their community. The research found that 63 percent of builders are 45 or older, 59 percent are not college graduates, and 57 percent earn $60,000 or less a year. They’re proportionately distributed in the north and south (53 percent to 47 percent, respectively), and by race (58 percent white, 19 percent Black, 12 percent Latino, 6 percent Asian, 2 percent Native American, 1 percent other). Builders are self-actualized but often invisible to progressive activists or mislabeled as “disengaged” by progressive researchers because they don’t respond to progressive appeals.
Yet builders outnumber progressive activists by 3 million (39 to 36 million people). For perspective, the size of this rarely addressed market is 14 times the margin of victory in the 2024 presidential race. The 20 percent of builders (7.8 million people) who are Republicans are three times the margin of victory alone. Simply learning to speak builder language presents social change organizations with enormous opportunity to engage people of all political identities to support progressive goals without compromising anyone’s values. Let’s unpack the common denominators of next narrative appeals to builders.
1. People want to be defined by their aspirations, not their problems.
The entire social impact sector, including medicine, is hooked on “the problem statement” and consequently labels entire populations and patients according to problems. For instance, the field often defines communities solely as “low-income.” This kind of framing has the unintended but lasting consequences of stigmatizing populations, because they become known only for how they’re behind, below, less than, and lower than whatever is socially normal. Narratives that hide their aspirations and contributions also make it seem like social impact leaders are here to save them and like society must pay a price to lift up people that traditional framing puts down. This self-aggrandizing posture feels righteous, because in that narrative, the advocate for the downtrodden is effectively the hero of the story.
The Time Magazine article written by Stacey Abrams illustrates how ridiculous this negative labeling can become. It introduces civil rights attorney, Nobel Prize nominee, and American history maker Desmond Meade as, “Homeless and suicidal, with a felony record…” I pointed out to Meade that there were times in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life when he was all three of those things, but who would introduce him that way? Similarly, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPCL) introduces Meade as: “The former drug user who had been convicted of a felony was building himself a new life. He had climbed out of homelessness, incarceration and addiction.”
To be clear, Abrams and Margaret Huang, who runs SPLC, are Meade’s allies. They, like many progressives who label communities by their worst experiences, mean no harm. But Huang’s bio introduces her this way: “An experienced human rights and racial justice advocate, Huang leads the SPLC in its mission to serve as a catalyst for racial justice in the South…” So, it’s worth noting that Meade is literally all those things too, but progressives and news media often treat the worst experiences of stigmatized populations as credentials and disregard the credentials they’ve earned.
Rather than starting with a problem statement and how to “fix a broken world,” next narratives assume that the sector exists to “build a better world.” They start with aspirational statements—not an organization’s aspirations but the aspirations of the people it seeks to serve. From there, next narratives introduce the challenges that thwart those groups’ worthy ends and invite others to do their small but significant part to make a better world.
Allen, Edwards, and Desmond and Sheena Meade define the people who are experiencing unfairness or injustice as the protagonists in their own lives, introducing their aspirations and contributions before noting their challenges. This is called “Asset-Framing.” I coined Asset-Framing and have taught it since 2013. Its primary benefit is preventing stigma and thereby preventing the belittling, blaming, and shaming that arise from stigma. With stigma removed, systemic unfairness becomes much easier to see. When we define groups by how they earn, yearn, seek, strive, work, and build yet see they still experience deep hardship, it becomes much easier to accept that some outside influence is obstructing their success. So, the story of the “under-resourced communities” to Allen is more clearly about giving wealth builders of color fair lending. The story of “disadvantaged youth” to Edwards is more accurately about students and aspiring designers seeking a fair opportunity to learn. The story of “ex-convicts” and “formerly incarcerated” people to Sheena and Desmond Meade are more accurately about people seeking a second chance after having paid their debt to society. These more common-sense articulations of aspiring people facing systemic challenges to their worthy goals resonate with builders.
2. You can love your country and still want to build better systems.
Progressives regularly describe America as racist, sexist, classist, toxic, and capitalist. These may be true, but just as calling impoverished people poor or incarcerated people criminal may be technically true, they’re not the whole truth.
Next narrative strategies extend Asset-Framing to systems—again, defining systems and even the United States in this case by its aspirations and contributions before noting their challenges. America’s highest promise to the world is that it can be a land of liberty and justice for all, wherein people are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of prosperity. That is the aspiration. The fair criticism that it hasn’t lived up to those aspirations is what inspires so many to want to “fix broken systems.” Nonetheless, builders need to hear organizations say that they’re working to fulfill the aspirations first, not just solve the problem or paint the picture that all the systems are broken and anyone who benefits from them should be stigmatized as well. Essentially, if you can define people by their aspirations and contributions en route to solving problems, then you can define America that way too. It doesn’t need to be flag-waving or jingoism, but millions of people who know that things are broken also love their country. Messaging that doesn’t vilify them for doing so works better than messaging that does.
When appropriate, you can even use Asset-Framing for the perceived opposition to your campaign. In every example listed here, Meades, Allen, and Edwards defined institutions by their positive purposes regardless of political affiliation. State governments aspire to protect democracy and prosper their citizens. Banks aspire to build wealth. And school systems aspire to build knowledge and capable graduates.
3. Jargon only communicates to your in-group.
This one is communications 101, but as we try to evolve people’s thinking and awareness, we inevitably come up with jargon like “intersectionality,” “toxic masculinity,” and “critical race theory.” We know that at least 39 million Americans essentially agree with progressive goals but are not ready for jargon 401-level narratives. This doesn’t make them evil, cancelable, nor dumb any more than it will make you those things if you must look up the meaning of “oleo” simply because you don’t know what it is.
Jargon is not an expression of intelligence nor necessarily even evolved thinking; it’s literally just shorthand language for the in-group that knows it. So, next narrative strategies speak to people in plain language about passions rather than politics. To be clear, when speaking with groups that are into jargon like Asset-Framing, then obviously you can use it. But even then, they’ll remember it better if you can break it down to a more commonsensical expression like, “State their best before the rest.”
4. Fear is not a progress emotion.
In politics, both the left and the right over-rely on fear to engage people in causes. So, both succeed at engendering a great sense of dread and over time diminishing hope. In the current narratives from both sides and the news media, we seem to continuously live in a broken world. It’s exhausting. It’s literally toxic according to the American Psychological Association, which advises people to moderate their news consumption so that they don’t increase stress-related emotional and physical illness.
Next narrative strategies do not anchor attention to brokenness, threats, and fear because fear is a reactive emotion. It triggers our survival response, which is counter to empathy, true hope, and a growth mindset. Next narrative strategies lead with positive aspirations then focus on how we can build better futures together, not just fix a broken world. Since builders are disaffected by broken-world scenarios, talking about what they can help build engages them much better than talking only about what we can fix. As I pointed out earlier, change agents can define America by its challenges, or they can define it as a nation that has promised liberty and justice for all before listing all the same challenges.
Continuing to Build
To put the need for next narratives in context, it’s helpful to understand the history of the old ones. Boomers—people born during the post-World War II baby boom and the largest generational group in the history of the United States—have been adults for over 50 years and shaped all kinds of cultural norms. While they presided over the largest expansion of material wealth in history, they also made fear, blame, shame, and crises our default tools of mobilization. Boomers declared War on Poverty, War on Crime, War on Drugs, and War on Terror, and invented the “burning platform” metaphor, which argues that major change requires a sense of imminent danger.
Today, after half a century of exposure to this cultural phenomenon, we don’t question it much. It continues to influence messaging of all kinds, including political campaigns. Yet, as institutional power shifts to the next generation, we have a chance to establish a different narrative norm for social innovation. The social sector has the opportunity to leave old narratives behind and to begin its thoughts and proposals with aspirational rather than problem statements. From there, it can talk about the striving people in whom it seeks to invest and the better systems we can work to build. Detailing the systemic dysfunctions and unfairness in this light will make it far easier for people of all identities to see them. From a shared knowledge of each other’s genuine aspirations and contributions, society can stop believing that giving certain groups the rights and privileges they’ve earned is somehow an act of charity.
Shifting to more aspirational, dignifying, values-driven, problem-naming, and accessible ways of communicating offers social sector organizations the chance to make our communications more effective. Campaigns that have used next narrative approaches have already raised billions for progressive causes; engaged millions of people from across the political spectrum in institutional, legal, and historic progress; increased hope; and decreased stigma. Nothing theoretical about it. All is doable today if we’re willing to speak the language of allies we’ve ignored and move on from the narrative identity of being fixers of a broken world to the next narrative of being builders of a better one.
Trabian Shorters is the founder of TrabianShorters.com and cofounder of BMe Community, which a 2024 national landscape analysis by The Bridgespan Group found to be the number-one leadership network for intrinsic and multidimensional impacts on leaders, communities, and systems. Shorters, a retired tech entrepreneur, is the foremost authority on Asset-Framing, and other applicable cognitive, social, and cultural psychology skills.
Students using computers in a classroom.
Want to learn something new? My suggestion: Don’t ask ChatGPT. While tech leaders promote generative AI tools as your new, go-to source for information, my experience as a university librarian suggests otherwise. Generative AI tools often produce “hallucinations,” in the form of fabricated misinformation that convincingly mimics actual, factual truth.
The concept of AI “hallucinations” came to my attention not long after the launch of ChatGPT. Librarians at universities and colleges throughout the country began to share a puzzling trend: students were spending time fruitlessly searching for books and articles that simply didn’t exist. It was only after questioning that students revealed their source as ChatGPT. In the tech world, these fabrications are called “hallucinations,” a term borrowed from psychiatry to describe sensory systems that become temporarily distorted. In this context, the term implies generative AI has human cognition, but it emphatically does not. The fabrications are outputs of non-human algorithms that can misinform – and too often, do.
In April of 2023, a news headline read: ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. The story began by describing a surprising incident. A reader had inquired about an article that couldn’t be found. The reporter couldn’t remember having written such an article, but it “certainly sounded like something they would have written.” Colleagues attempted to track it down, only to discover that no such article had been published. As librarians had learned just weeks prior, ChatGPT had fabricated an article citation, but this time the title was so believable that even the reporter couldn’t remember if they’d written it.
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Since the release of ChatGPT two years ago, OpenAI’s valuation has soared to $157 billion, which might suggest that hallucinations are no longer a problem. However, you’d be wrong. Hallucinations are not a ‘problem’ but an integral “feature” of how ChatGPT, and other generative AI tools, work. According to Kristian Hammon, Professor and Director of the Center for Advancing Safety of Machine Intelligence, “hallucinations are not bugs; they’re a fundamental part” of how generative AI works. In an essay describing the hallucination problem, he concludes, “Our focus shouldn’t be on eliminating hallucinations but on providing language models with the most accurate and up-to-date information possible…staying as close to the truth as the data allows.”
Companies like OpenAI have been slow to educate the public about this issue. For example, OpenAI released its first ChatGPT guide for students only in November 2024, almost 24 months after ChatGPT launched. Rather than explaining hallucinations, the guide states simply, “Since language models can generate inaccurate information, always double-check your facts.” Educating the public about fabricated misinformation and how to discern AI fact from fiction has not been a priority for OpenAI.
Even experts have difficulty deciphering AI’s fabrications. A Stanford University professor recently apologized for using citations generated by ChatGPT in a November 1 court filing supporting a Minnesota law banning political deepfakes. The citation links went to nonexistent journal articles and incorrect authors. The professor’s use of these citations has called his expertise into question and opened the door to excluding his declaration from the court’s consideration. Interestingly, he was paid $600 an hour to write the filing, and he researches “lying and technology.”
Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, a health sciences professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, warns that AI hallucinations can have “life-threatening consequences” in medicine. He points out, “The standard disclaimers provided by models like ChatGPT, which warn that ‘ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info,’ are insufficient safeguards in clinical settings.” He suggests training medical professionals to understand that AI content is not always reliable, even though it may sound convincing.
To be sure, AI doesn’t always hallucinate and humans also make mistakes. When I explain the issue of AI hallucinations and the need for public education to students and friends, a common response is, “But, humans make mistakes, too.” That’s true–but we’re well-aware of human fallibility. That same awareness doesn’t extend to content created by AI tools like ChatGPT. Instead, humans have a well-documented tendency to believe automated tools, a phenomenon known as automation bias. The misinformation coming from AI tools is especially dangerous because it is less likely to be questioned. As Emily Bender, a professor of computational linguistics, summarized, “a system that is right 95% of the time is arguably more dangerous than one that is right 50% of the time. People will be more likely to trust the output, and likely less able to fact check the 5%”.
Anyone using ChatGPT or other AI tools needs to understand that fabricated misinformation, “hallucinations”, are a problem. Beyond a simple technical glitch, hallucinations pose real dangers, from academic missteps to life-threatening medical errors. Fabricated misinformation is just one of the many challenges of living in an AI-infused world.
We have an ethical responsibility to teach students not only how to use AI but also how to critically evaluate AI inputs, processes, and outputs. Educational institutions have the opportunity and the obligation to create courses and initiatives that prepare students to confront the ethical challenges posed by AI, that is why we are currently developing a Center for AI Literacy and Ethics at Oregon State University. It is imperative that educational institutions, not corporations, lead the charge in educating our students about the ethical dimensions and critical use of AI.
Laurie Bridges is an instruction librarian and professor at Oregon State University. She recently taught “Generative AI and Society,” an OSU Honors College colloquium focused on AI literacy and ethics. Laurie Bridges is a Public Voices Fellow of the Op-Ed Project.
President-elect Donald Trump, Wednesday, January 8, 2025.
Withhis loyalists lining up for key law-enforcement roles, Trump is fixated on former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who helped lead the January 6 congressional investigation. “Liz Cheney has been exposed in the Interim Report, by Congress, of the J6 Unselect Committee as having done egregious and unthinkable acts of crime,”Trump recently said. Then he added: “She is so unpopular and disgusting, a real loser!”
This accelerates a dangerous trend in American politics: using the criminal justice system to settle political scores. Boththe Trumps and the Bidens have been entangled in numerous criminal law controversies, as have many other politicians this century, includingScooter Libbey,Ted Stevens,Robert Coughlin,William Jefferson,Jesse Jackson Jr.,David Petraeus,Michael Fylnn,Steve Bannon,Bob Menendez, andGeorge Santos.
Some of these cases represent legitimate law enforcement work. Some don't. The overall trend is clear: the bloodlust to imprison political rivals is intensifying.
The implications are profound. First, criminalizing politics undermines the fundamental principle that the rule of law applies equally to all people. Entangling the passions and biases of politics with the criminal law leads to different prosecutorial standards depending on someone's political affiliations—instead of evidence regarding their guilt or innocence. In American politics, the messenger matters more than the message; the actor matters more than the act. With the rule of law, the opposite is true: all individuals must be treated equally, and their specific alleged misdeeds—alone—are what counts.
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Second, criminalizing politics accelerates a disturbing trend toward ever more polarization. It ramps up the stakes from treating opponents as political rivals to treating them like personal enemies.
Hardball politics is, of course, nothing new. It's woven into the fabric of our democratic system. But ultimately, we are one nation in a dangerous world. Our internal disputes shouldn’t consume too much national bandwidth.According to Trump, “I always say, we have two enemies. We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries.”
This is a dangerous perspective and he couldn't be more wrong. Trump's mentality undercuts Americans’ ability to respond to the myriad international threats we face together. If looked at from a global perspective, Americans’ interests overlap far more than they diverge. Our energy should be focused on understanding and addressing big global challenges, not sending officials we don't like to jail.
Finally, criminalizing politics deters quality people from even entering the political arena. The United States government already has a personnel problem. Look no further than the presidency. We will soon transition from a man with obviously declining mental facilities to a man who tried to reverse the previous presidential election. This is neither normal nor the way it's always been. We shouldn’t further dissuade talented people from entering government over concerns that imperfections and ambiguities in their past will be twisted into politically motivated criminal accusations. The downside of winning office should be losing the next election and not going to jail.
These concerns must be understood in context. It's, of course, true that entering government should neither absolve someone from past crimes nor serve as a license to commit new ones. And even-handed justice requires prosecuting not just the weak and anonymous but also the powerful and well-known.
Striking the right balance is hard. But there should be a strong presumption in favor of leaving politics—and its inherent passions and prejudices—outside the courthouse.
Politicizing the rule of law doesn't just undermine our government and poison our justice system. It imperils our nation as a whole.
William Cooper is the author of “How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t.”
A test tube with a blood test for h5n1 avian influenza. The concept of an avian flu pandemic. Checking the chicken for diseases.
The first human death from bird flu in the United States occurred on January 6 in a Louisiana hospital, less than three weeks before the second Donald Trump administration’s inauguration. Bird flu, also known as Avian influenza or H5N1, is a disease that has been on the watch list of scientists and epidemiologists for its potential to become a serious threat to humans.
COVID-19’s chaotic handling during Trump’s first term serves as a stark reminder of the stakes. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, last year, 66 confirmed human cases of H5N1 bird flu were reported in the United States. That is a significant number when you consider that only one case was recorded in the two previous years.
Bird flu was first detected in domestic birds in 1996 in Southern China and has since spread to wild birds, mammals, and humans worldwide, with a fatality rate reaching 50% in some cases. In the U.S., cases have been mostly mild, affecting primarily poultry and dairy workers, until this recent death in Louisiana.
In the spring of last year, bird flu showed up in cows. When a pathogen—any organism that causes a disease—jumps species, scientists get nervous because its genetic makeup can reconfigure and become more transmissible or lethal. The fact that humans are now being infected is a red flag. Though human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has not yet happened, it does not mean it can’t.
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“That’s our concern — the more shots on goal that we give the virus, the greater chance of there being a mutation of some sort that precipitates a much larger situation,” said Dr. Nirav D. Shah, principal deputy director of the CDC. “But we’re also equally interested in the scientific finding that thus far, in the current outbreak, cases have been milder than what we’ve seen historically.”
Since the health of animals is directly linked to that of humans, the federal government took swift action. In a joint op-ed in USA Today, Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services, and Tom Vilsack, secretary of Agriculture, said, “As heads of the federal departments responsible for human health and animal health, we quickly stood up a coordinated response organized around four key priorities: monitoring and stopping transmission, protecting workers and the public, keeping animals healthy and ensuring the safety of our food supply.” Drinking raw milk, for instance, is especially risky now.
The key question is whether the new administration has the political will to prioritize Americans' health. Trump’s nominee to lead Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr., is a vocal vaccine skeptic critical of federal mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similarly, Dr. Dave Weldon, the nominee for CDC, has questioned the efficacy of vaccines and public health measures to control disease outbreaks.
For an in-depth conversation on the role of Health and Human Services, listen to this 1A podcast episode with host Jenn White by clicking HERE.
Rebecca Katz, Director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University and author of The Outbreak Atlas, reminds us that bird flu is the latest threat to human health. This past year alone, the world witnessed a Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda, Mpox in central Africa, and a resurgence of measles worldwide, primarily driven by diminished confidence in childhood vaccines.
“There are death, taxes, and emerging infectious diseases. You can guarantee that there will be more diseases,” Katz told the Fulcrum, adding there is a collective tendency to pivot from cycles of panic to neglect. “We had the biggest generational disease event five years ago. Now, we are in the biggest valley of neglect. There's no money, no workforce, and no confidence. We're going to have to fix that.”
On January 3, President Joe Biden’s administration announced US$ 306 million in additional funding for the H5N1 response. However, experts such as Katz believe there are still insufficient resources allocated towards long-term pandemic preparedness. Despite the likelihood of future outbreaks, Trump has suggested disbanding the Office of Pandemic Preparedness, established in 2022, which would hinder coordinated national responses. Making childhood vaccines optional could further erode collective immunity and prompt insurers to stop covering them.
“The reason why vaccines are so readily available to people is because of the Affordable Care Act and the vaccine for children program,” said Sam Bagenstos, former General Council to HHS under President Biden, on the 1A show aired January 8 on NPR. “If the CDC Director were to take vaccines off that list, vaccines would instantly become effectively unavailable to most people in the country. There is a very substantial risk that even without taking away the approval of vaccines, even without any regulatory changes, a new administration could make it much harder for people to get vaccinated.”
Managing outbreaks, says Katz, is complex and requires coordination at all levels. While the CDC, as a federal agency, is tasked with the genetic sequencing of a virus, two things must be prioritized locally: disease surveillance and public awareness. However, “if I had to pick one priority investment, it would be people,” says Katz. “I am deeply concerned about our workforce. We don't have enough people, and the ones we have are not sufficiently supported to be able to do their jobs effectively.”
The lack of trust and outright threats directed at U.S. medical personnel and public health officials at the height of the pandemic prompted many to resign, leaving behind a demoralized and weaker workforce. Mistrust is fueled by rumors and inaccurate information. But disinformation, which is false and deliberately intended to mislead the public, plays an even greater role in undermining trust.
The Outbreak Atlas, co-authored by Katz and Wellcome Trust scholar Mackenzie S. Moore, uses global case studies to explain outbreak preparedness, response, and recovery. It aims to educate people with the tools to make informed decisions during disease outbreaks, regardless of federal actions.
“I'm a professor, so I believe in increasing public literacy,” says Katz. “The more people know, the more they're able to understand, the better they're able to digest and make sense of the information that comes out around the next threat.”
Incoming administration officials would be wise to read The Outbreak Atlas. When George W. Bush was president, he urged his top officials to read The Great Influenza by historian John M. Barry, recognizing the need for a national strategy to prevent another catastrophe like the 1918 flu pandemic. His foresight was a model of preparedness. Why wait for bird flu—or any other infectious disease—to spiral out of control when the time to act is now?
Beatrice Spadacini is a freelance journalist who writes about social justice and public health.
