A Method for Collaborative Storytelling: Supporting Public Health Transformation Through Practitioner-Driven...

We developed a collaborative storytelling model through the Kansas Health Institute's Transforming Public Health for the 21st Century blog to surface, refine, and disseminate practitioner-driven narratives. Grounded in constructivist and interpretive qualitative traditions and informed by duoethnography, the model positions practitioners as cocreators rather than subjects. To ensure rigor and transparency, the approach is explicitly aligned with Tracy's Big Tent Criteria for Excellent Qualitative Research, translating these principles into practical guidance for story selection, co-construction, analysis, and presentation.

The model follows a structured yet flexible, step-by-step process that includes practitioner engagement, topic identification, semistructured interviews, iterative qualitative analysis, follow-up interviews, and narrative development. Tracy's criteria, such as worthy topic, rich rigor, sincerity, credibility, resonance, and meaningful coherence, guide each stage of implementation. Final narratives are disseminated through a public-facing blog and national platforms, extending reach and relevance for practitioners and policy audiences.

Model feasibility, acceptability, and analytic value are demonstrated through illustrative applications addressing multicounty governance, accreditation in small health departments, and organizational culture change. These examples show how the collaborative storytelling model supports analytic depth, practitioner authenticity, and field relevance across diverse public health contexts.

Collaborative storytelling offers a practical strategy for public health transformation by fostering perspective change, practitioner thought leadership, and organizational learning. By embedding established qualitative quality criteria into an accessible, cocreative process, the model provides actionable guidance for leadership development, qualitative training, community health assessment, and capacity building in public health practice.