Narrative Arts facilitators leading a community-led conversation on public health trust in rural North Carolina

Across rural North Carolina, people make health decisions every day within systems shaped by long histories of racial exclusion, underinvestment, and harm. For many rural communities, particularly Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and working-class residents, public health institutions have too often failed to reflect their lived realities or earn their trust. In October of 2025, Narrative Arts launched a new 24-month, community-driven initiative to address this trust gap through sustained community listening and shared power in shaping the narratives that influence health systems.

At a moment when trust in public institutions is strained and rural communities face widening racial and health inequities, the initiative brings neighbors, artists, and community leaders together to explore how trust in governmental public health systems is built, lost, and repaired. The work centers how public understanding shifts when communities most impacted by inequity help define the narratives that shape health policy, practice, and investment.

Rather than studying rural communities from a distance, Narrative Arts is building power with them. Our process creates structured, facilitated spaces for people to share lived experiences of care, access, neglect, and accountability—experiences often shaped by racism, economic marginalization, and geographic isolation. These spaces support healing and collective reflection while generating community-defined narratives that influence how public health is framed, understood, and acted upon.

“This work starts with real conversations rooted in lived experience,” said Nick Szuberla, Executive Director of Narrative Arts. “Narrative shapes what people believe is possible. When communities most affected by inequity lead these conversations, trust can begin to be rebuilt and more just approaches to public health can emerge.”

The initiative will engage residents across North Carolina’s rural counties, including Columbus, Pender, Carteret, Pitt, and Hertford. The focus is on people often excluded from public decision-making: BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, working-class, and historically marginalized rural communities. Through story circles, interviews, and collaborative media-making, participants will contribute to a shared narrative foundation rooted in lived experience rather than deficit-based assumptions.

Through sustained community listening, Narrative Arts will work with participants to identify shared themes, values, and narrative frames that shape how public health is understood in rural North Carolina. These insights will inform a narrative strategy and public-facing report designed to support local organizations, advocates, and institutions seeking to strengthen trust and advance racial equity in health outcomes. Rather than prescribing solutions, the strategy will elevate community-defined frames that can guide communication, policy, and investment in ways that reflect how people actually experience health, care, and accountability.

“When rural communities—especially communities of color—are framed only through deficits, distrust becomes inevitable,” said Rend Smith, Narrative Arts strategist. “This initiative works upstream by shifting the narrative conditions shaped by historic harm, so solutions emerge from community wisdom rather than being imposed from outside.”

To expand the conversation, Narrative Arts will produce a feature-length documentary film and a podcast series, bringing these community-defined narratives to wider audiences across the state and beyond. Produced by Ish Abdelkhalek and Layna Hong, whose work emphasizes lived experience, cultural memory, and accountability, the film and podcast series will serve as both a public record and a strategic tool for shaping public understanding. This media will offer community-defined narratives to policymakers, advocates, and institutions influencing public health decisions.

The work strengthens long-term relationships with local partners. In Columbus County, Narrative Arts is collaborating with Community CPR, led by Wallyce Todd, whose work centers community care, mutual aid, and health justice.

“Public health works best when people feel they have a real hand in shaping it,” said Todd. “For communities that have experienced generations of harm and exclusion, being heard is essential to rebuilding trust.”

Based in Wilmington and Asheville, Narrative Arts is nationally recognized for its narrative-strategy work in support of Southern movement-building. This initiative reflects the organization’s belief that narratives are not just reflections of reality—they are part of the infrastructure that shapes whose lives are valued and what change is possible.

Over the next two years, the project will advance a community-informed narrative strategy, public media, and relationship-building efforts designed to support advocacy for rural health priorities with legislators, policymakers, and funders.

Organizations interested in hosting a story circle as part of the listening process are encouraged to complete the interest form and join the work.