The use of photovoice as a method of facilitating deliberation

Efforts have been made in one rural Appalachian county to broaden local participation in a community health assessment. Through a series of community forums and a photovoice project, residents named community health needs and assets, framed potential solutions, and selected possible action steps to improve the local health status. Photographs and narratives from the photovoice project supplemented information from preliminary health forums to devise a framework of possible solutions to the identified health problems. Analysis of forum transcripts suggests that participants who used an issue guide that used photovoice images and stories were able to transition from broad approaches of change to specific action steps more than participants in other forums who used a more traditional forum issue guide. Community members are more easily able to identify solutions to local health issues when forum discussions are informed by local images and narratives.