We’ve seen it countless times in our workshops. The participants gather into a story circle, and someone hesitates before volunteering to share her story first. Often there is a quiet pause before she begins, a deep breath steadying her voice, and then her first sentence. “After multiple pregnancy losses, I’d worried about the possibility of another one, but I told myself this time would be different.” As she continues, transformation settles over the room: her into a storyteller, and everyone else into listeners. Before the workshop is over, she’ll carry her story differently because she’s shared it, people have listened, and she feels heard. She finishes, and someone else begins. 

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Collaborating with the Indiana Department of Health

Over the past two years, we’ve been deeply honored to partner with the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH) to create and facilitate a series of digital storytelling workshops with women who have faced challenging maternal health experiences. Supported by HRSA funding, these workshops are part of a larger initiative to improve maternal health outcomes across the state of Indiana by bringing lived experience directly into the conversation about systems change.

Our shared goal was simple but profound: to give space for mothers and families to tell their stories in their own words, and to use those stories to humanize data, deepen empathy, and inspire change among healthcare providers and policymakers statewide. Watch stories from the initiative here.

As Mareé Mickens, a Maternal Health Equity Specialist with IDOH, shared,

“It’s a safe and supportive space for individuals to come and talk. Some of these individuals have never told their stories, and to be able to provide them that platform and that safe space has been nothing short of amazing. After the first session, by the time week two comes around, they're talking. They're sharing everything. I mean, we've seen the videos. We've seen everything. It's amazing.”

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Building Trust, Breaking Barriers

Many participants arrived unsure of what to expect. Some carried hesitation about sharing intimate experiences, especially with representatives from a state agency. Others wondered whether their voices would really matter.

Together with our partners at IDOH, we worked to create a trauma-informed, peer-supported environment where participants have complete control over their stories. 

Mareé later reflected,

“People look at us at the state and they’re like, ‘Why should I talk to you?’ That was one of the reasons we wanted to bring the workshops to Indiana—to build that trust and say, ‘Hey, we are here for you. We want to hear your story.’”

That trust became the heartbeat of the project. It bridged differences of race, geography, and background; it softened skepticism and turned it into connection. 

Christine Euliss, a Maternal Mental Health Coordinator with IDOH, shared,

“When folks are sharing their draft version of their stories, especially the second session, the most raw folks will probably get during this whole experience is when they truly are reading out their stories and getting that feedback. Allison and her team do such a good job of just laying down the expectations of ‘what happens here stays here’ and that ‘you are the expert of your story.’ ‘We can provide feedback and guidance, but ultimately, you're the screen director of your own story. And so take whatever suggestions we have, but we're here to help you. We just want this to be the best version of your story and something that you're proud to share.’ She also just does a great job of making sure that everybody's respectful and not trying to take ownership of somebody else's story. Again, you are the true owner of this experience in the story. She does a wonderful job of establishing that and just the psychological safety for folks to share probably the most vulnerable stories that some folks may not have talked about in such a long time.”

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Healing and Empowerment Through Storytelling

For the women who participated, storytelling became a way not only to be heard but to heal.

Carla D. Smith, one of the mothers who joined the workshops, shared how the process unearthed memories she had long tucked away.

“In telling my story, there were pieces of it that I’d tucked away. Bringing out those little details helped me process those parts of my birth story I hadn’t dealt with.”

Her story illuminated the ways bias and miscommunication can affect patient care—and how courage and self-advocacy can become catalysts for change. After the workshop, Carla and several of her peers joined IDOH’s Maternal Health Task Force, lending their firsthand perspectives to ongoing policy discussions.

“Myself and a few other ladies are now part of the Indiana Department of Health task-force subgroup… giving that personal (or individual) voice to that task force,” she said.

Another storyteller, Laura Miller, brought a long history of advocacy through the Preeclampsia Foundation and the Indiana Perinatal Quality Improvement Collaborative. For her, the digital storytelling process offered something new—an emotional and visual dimension to her ongoing advocacy for rural-ER maternal-care deserts.

“It made me more emotional than I’ve been in a long time about my story… if I can bring that emotion out, those emotions are what’s going to make change.”

Laura’s completed story now serves as an educational tool in multiple initiatives—including mental-health and trauma-informed-care task forces—where it’s being used to help providers understand the lived realities behind clinical data.

“I’ve seen the clinical paperwork where you’re just a dot on a spreadsheet,” she told us. “To see who that person is—what they sound like—that’s going to inspire change beyond any graph.”

These personal stories reveal what statistics can’t: the emotional truth of maternal care, the gaps in follow-up, the ripple effects on families and communities. They remind us that systems don’t heal people—people heal people.

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From Stories to Systems Change

As the workshops concluded, the impact didn’t end with the storytellers. Through IDOH’s leadership, the stories have already begun to influence professional training and systems learning across the state.

StoryCollab and IDOH co-hosted an online public screening where healthcare providers, educators, and community members viewed the finished stories and participated in moderated Q&A sessions with storytellers. The conversations that followed were raw, honest, and deeply illuminating.

Christine recalled how powerful it was to open the event to all audiences.

“We asked ourselves, ‘How do we get this in front of folks? Why not just invite everybody? It could be for the community. It could be for providers. It could be for family members, friends, whoever, just all walks of life. And even now, we’re still getting feedback about how incredible it was for these storytellers to share their stories, to truly transform pain into power and purpose. Since then, so many people have been asking ‘How do we get access to these stories? Like, where, where do they live? How can we share these with our providers in the hospital space? How do we share this in our trainings? How do we get this in front of other providers so that they see these stories and they can hear these stories and continue to amplify those voices?’

The momentum grew. The videos began appearing in IDOH meetings and webinars for hospitals across the state.

“The screening got those videos in front of clinicians. This is raw and uncut. It’s not numbers. So how do we make things better?” said Mareé.

For Christine, this project confirmed how lived experience can sharpen program design and regional responsiveness:

“Within Indiana, the needs of Northern Indiana may be very different from Southern Indiana. To see what regional themes mothers are encountering helps us provide more localized, tailored services.”

These insights are now shaping new IDOH initiatives—informing pilot programs, training hospital staff, and inspiring the development of a Maternal Health Storytelling Toolkit and Interactive StoryMap.

Together, we’re building tools that combine narrative, data, and geography to help providers see how maternal health outcomes connect to lived realities across Indiana. The toolkit will feature story transcripts, discussion questions, reflection activities, and educational resources. The StoryMap will layer digital stories, quotes, and infographics on a map of Indiana, visually connecting the human stories to the health data that affects them.

The goal of both is clear: to activate communities, engage healthcare providers, and promote empathy as a foundation for better care.

As Christine put it,

“When I read something in an article or report, they're not a number. These are people, and they deserve to be heard. They shouldn't be discredited. To be able to share their story and walk somebody else through their experience. At the end of the day, they’re a human being. We want to amplify those voices to affect change.”

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Lessons in Partnership and Possibility

This collaboration has reminded all of us that storytelling can’t be separated from systems change—it’s where systems change begins.

When IDOH first approached StoryCollab, we all anticipated challenges: recruitment, time constraints, emotional labor. But the response exceeded expectations.

“I thought recruitment would be a challenge… By cohort three, we had the highest number of participants—a good problem to have,” said Christine.

More importantly, the workshops changed everyone involved.

“I was not expecting to get so emotional listening to some of these women share their stories. My eyeballs were sweating,” Christine laughed.

Moments like that reveal the human dimension of public service—the reminder that behind every form, survey, and data set are people carrying stories that matter. The IDOH team didn’t just initiate and sponsor the project; they showed up, listened, and learned alongside the storytellers.

For S facilitators, it was equally moving to witness the reciprocity between participants and agency staff. Each cohort became a small community of mutual learning, resilience, and grace. The women found solidarity with one another, and the IDOH team found renewed purpose in their work.

What began as a pilot initiative has grown into a framework—a way for agencies to listen differently, act differently, and measure change not only in outcomes but in empathy.

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A Call to Collaboration

This project has reaffirmed what we at StoryCollab have always believed: that listening to each others’ stories is not an “add-on” to public health. It’s a catalyst for transformation.

Through our partnership with the Indiana Department of Health, we’ve seen how digital storytelling can unite communities, reveal blind spots in care, and empower people with lived experience to become agents of change. We’ve seen how narrative can turn pain into purpose, isolation into advocacy, and statistics into stories that stick.

We’re deeply grateful to the mothers who shared their stories, to the IDOH team for their trust and innovation, and to the broader network of collaborators—from HRSA funders to community partners—who made this work possible.

We believe every state, every health department, and every healthcare organization can benefit from listening in this way. When stories become systems, and systems make space for stories, that’s where healing—and change—begin.

If your organization would like to explore a partnership that centers human experience in health and social impact, we’d love to hear from you.