Decision Makers

Digital storytelling is an art-based research method that involves the creation of a short video (3-5 minutes) integrating multimedia materials like photos, people’s voices, drawings, and music. It has a great potential to elucidate complex narratives in a compelling manner, increase participant engagement, and enhance the meaning of research findings.

Policy facts

The editorial entitled Dangerous words published on The Lancet starts stating that “Medicine is underpinned by both art and science. Art that relies upon strong therapeutic relationships with patients and populations. And science that brings statistical rigour to clinical and public health practice”. This statement introduces the decision of Trump administration to ban words like health equity, vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, evidence-based, and science-based from government documents for the US$7 billion budget discussions about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

There are a number of groups that are especially vulnerable in terms of susceptibility to influenza and barriers to accessing vaccinations. This may lead to larger problems in case of a pandemic; for example, in the H1N1 2009 outbreak in Australia, indigenous Australians, a hard to reach group, were overrepresented in rates of hospitalisation (Seale et al 2010). Hard to reach groups may have adverse health outcomes, and the complex interplay of gender and social and economic marginalisation makes this a particular issue for women (Davidson et al 2011).