Evaluating Investments in Communications and Narrative Change
A public health foundation learns how frontline organizations can meet the moment in a crisis—and drive long-term change.
The California Endowment, one of the nation's largest public health foundations, invested in strategic communications and narrative change initiatives across 18 organizations during COVID-19.
The grantmaking pursued two simultaneous goals: rapid public health messaging to encourage masking and vaccination, and longer-term narrative change to expose systemic inequalities driving unequal health outcomes. Assessing both strategies at once raised a core question: could learnings from crisis communications inform narrative change work, and vice versa?
To answer that question, our team designed an evaluation that analyzed messages through a consistent framework. That process surfaced patterns no organization could see alone—revealing that rapid response and narrative change weren't competing priorities, but rather reinforced each other.
87% of grantees
promoted positive narratives even while delivering life-saving public health information.
In some cases, that combination contributed to real policy change, including California farmworkers being recognized as essential workers and prioritized for early vaccination.
Example of rapid-response communication:
Example of narrative change communication:
The evaluation gave The California Endowment a birds-eye view to see what was working across the entire state, which groups were best positioned to reach specific communities, and how to direct future funding more effectively.
