by: Diana Guardado
posted on Thursday, September 18, 2025
Advocacy can feel intimidating. But when you come with a values-based strategy, grounded research, and a story that bridges the personal with the political, people listen. Diana Guardado, BMSG Program Associate for Racial and Health Equity Strategy, recounts her experience advocating for policy change at the state level and shares the strategies she used to tell a compelling story.
by: Lunden Mason
posted on Tuesday, September 09, 2025
What makes some health policies feel controversial while others are embraced as common sense? It’s not the data — it’s the narrative. Decades of organizing and advocacy work resulted in strong public health narratives that explain why people today overwhelmingly accept drunk-driving laws or tobacco regulations that keep airplanes, restaurants, and other common spaces smoke-free. We can change the current narrative around public health issues like racial equity, health care access, and housing security by applying lessons from previous public health battles and working strategically to create strong coalitions across institutions, organizations, and media. To learn more about narrative power and why public health needs an infrastructure to build it, read our Q&A with Sarah Gollust, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
Tags: health equity, Milbank Quarterly, narrative infrastructure, narrative power, public health
by: Berkeley Media Studies Group and FrameWorks Institute
posted on Monday, June 02, 2025
As we move ever closer to legislation that will slash critical federal funding for health, it’s vital that voices in the movement for health equity speak up consistently and effectively. To help advocates overcome analysis paralysis and craft messages that work, BMSG teamed up with the FrameWorks Institute in our latest blog. Read on to learn about common framing pitfalls and try out our sample messages as you speak out in support of Medicaid and other critical components of our social safety net.
Tags: framing, medicaid, message development, messaging
by: Berkeley Media Studies Group
posted on Thursday, May 22, 2025
You wouldn’t know it from news coverage, but U.S. residents are more united on many issues than we realize, including Medicaid, which is currently under attack. A phenomenon known as the spiral of silence keeps many people from being as vocal as they want to be about supporting health care access and other major issues. Here are five tips, adapted from a recent webinar and BMSG’s many years of supporting people on the ground, for breaking the silence and communicating effectively about public health.
Tags: dei, division, framing, medicaid, messaging, unity, values
by: Lunden Mason
posted on Thursday, February 20, 2025
As the policies and upheavals of this administration bring fear, uncertainty, and pain to our communities, BMSG staff are processing and grieving this moment alongside all of you, dear readers. Despite the growing challenges we face, BMSG is dedicated to doing our part to further public health, equity, and justice by supporting strategic communication that uplifts our values and helps people visualize what is still possible. We know we can’t do that without a deep commitment to community- and self-care. In the spirit of solidarity, progress, and resilience, we’re sharing what’s been keeping us going, and how we’re moving forward.
by: Lunden Mason and Heather Gehlert
posted on Monday, January 27, 2025
In 2020, amid a global pandemic and a national reckoning with deeply rooted racism and white supremacy, more and more communities began to make formal declarations that racism is a public health crisis. How were these declarations portrayed in news coverage, and what are the implications for advocates? Newly published research from BMSG and The Praxis Project answers these and other questions. Additionally, this Q&A with the study’s lead author, BMSG media researcher Hina Mahmood, sheds further light on the inspiration behind the research and potential next steps for journalists and advocates.
by: Lunden Mason
posted on Wednesday, December 18, 2024
As staff members monitor the news throughout the year, we hold on to quotes that reaffirm our hope for the future. These media bites — pulled from news articles, op-eds, and social media posts — motivate us to push forward, challenge us to consider perspectives different from our own, or inspire us to imagine the kind of world we’d like to see. In keeping with BMSG’s annual tradition, we have curated a list of our favorite media bites from the past year. Read more for our top picks and reasons why we included them.
Tags: media bites, public health, social justice
by: Lunden Mason
posted on Thursday, December 05, 2024
Brian Malte is a nationally recognized leader in the gun violence prevention movement with 30 years of experience leading community-based efforts and strategic policy initiatives to keep homes and communities safe from gun violence. He leads Hope and Heal Fund, a first-of-its-kind, donor collaborative fund investing in a public health, racial equity, and community-based approach to preventing firearm violence and suicide in California. To help advocates create effective messaging surrounding firearm violence prevention, BMSG has partnered with the Hope and Heal Fund to create a new resource: “‘Together is where we save lives’: A messaging guide for California advocates working to reduce injuries and fatalities from firearms.” To learn more about Hope and Heal Fund, and dive deeper into the messaging guide, we sat down with Malte.
Tags: community violence, domestic violence, firearm suicide, firearm violence prevention, narrative change, violence prevention
by: Heather Gehlert
posted on Tuesday, October 22, 2024
Our sessions for APHA 2024 will equip advocates to communicate about difficult topics like the intersection of domestic violence and firearms, and the problematic narratives that have mischaracterized parks and green space as nice bonuses rather than as essential parts of a healthy community.
Tags: apha, health equity, media analysis, public health
by: Lunden Mason
posted on Monday, June 24, 2024
In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, journalists have been working tirelessly to show how continued efforts to restrict abortion impact the lives of women and pregnant people. The trouble is, many of the stories we’re seeing in news coverage represent extreme cases rather than the most common reasons women seek abortion, including because of financial circumstances, education or career goals, or because they already have children to care for. In this blog, BMSG communication assistant Lunden Mason shares her own abortion story and why more ordinary abortion experiences must be uplifted in news coverage.
