Episode #459 How to Tell Better Stories, With Sally Perkins, PhD
- 7 hours ago
- 5 min read
On This Episode Of The Public Health Epidemiology Conversations (PHEC) Podcast
What if the most powerful tool in your public health toolkit isn't a dataset or a policy brief? What if it's a story?
In this episode, Dr. Huntley sits down with Sally Perkins, PhD, a storytelling expert who has spent years teaching healthcare and public health professionals how to communicate in ways that actually move people to act. From persuading vaccine-hesitant patients to presenting population-level data to legislators, Dr. Perkins brings practical, field-tested frameworks to a challenge that nearly every public health professional faces: bridging the gap between what we know and what our audiences understand.
The Power of Storytelling in Public Health
Public health professionals are trained to analyze data, identify trends, and design interventions. But explaining that work to a patient, a community partner, or a policymaker? That's a different skill entirely. Dr. Perkins makes a compelling case that storytelling isn't a soft skill or a nice-to-have. It is one of the most essential tools any health professional can develop, and it can be learned.
This episode grew directly out of the PHEC podcast's ongoing "What Is Public Health?" series, which invites guests to explain public health in plain language. Dr. Huntley recognized that even professionals who are deeply committed to accessibility often struggle to translate their expertise into stories that resonate. That recognition led her to seek out one of the best storytelling instructors working in healthcare today.
From the Bedside to the Boardroom
Dr. Perkins' path to healthcare storytelling is both unexpected and inspiring. Her career began in academic rhetoric and communication before a series of life changes led her to volunteer telling stories at the bedside of pediatric patients at a children's hospital in Indianapolis. That experience sparked a career teaching storytelling to physicians, vaccination advocacy groups, and healthcare organizations of all types.
Today, she serves as director of storytelling at Authentics, a conversation intelligence company that uses both artificial intelligence and human expertise to turn recorded patient conversations into structured data. Her team then shapes that data into compelling narratives that help healthcare leaders drive meaningful change inside their organizations.
Simple Frameworks That Work
One of the most valuable things Dr. Perkins shares in this conversation is that powerful storytelling does not require talent you were born with. It requires frameworks you can learn and practice. She walks through the approach she outlines in her book, From Story to Action, including how to craft what she calls a "tree tale," a story grounded in individual experience at a specific point in time, and how to zoom out from that individual story to connect it to population-level data when your audience calls for it.
The physician who tried a new storytelling approach with a vaccine-hesitant patient after one of Dr. Perkins' workshops, and got that patient vaccinated a week later, is proof that these frameworks work in the real world.
Start Practicing Today
Whether you are a student, a frontline practitioner, or a senior leader, this episode gives you something you can use right away. Dr. Perkins shares how quickly professionals begin to see results once they start applying even basic storytelling principles, and she explains why busy professionals do not need to spend months building this skill before it starts paying off.
Dr. Huntley also encourages listeners to connect with Dr. Perkins directly and to pick up a copy of From Story to Action, which is available now. Links are in the show notes.
About Our Guest
Sally Perkins, PhD
Sally Perkins, PhD, is the director of storytelling at Authentics, a healthcare conversation intelligence company based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her team uses artificial intelligence and human expertise to transform recorded patient and caregiver conversations into structured data, then crafts compelling narratives from that data to help healthcare leaders drive organizational change. Dr. Perkins' career began in academic rhetoric and communication, and she brings more than a decade of experience teaching storytelling to physicians, healthcare organizations, vaccination advocacy groups, and nonprofit and government entities. She has served as a faculty resource for the Kentucky Physician Leadership Institute and has worked with organizations across the healthcare and public health landscape. Dr. Perkins is the author of From Story to Action: Transform Your Storytelling to Win Support and Ignite Change.
Listen To This Episode Of The Public Health Epidemiology Conversations (PHEC) Podcast
Conversation Highlights
Storytelling is a learnable skill, not an innate talent.Â
Dr. Perkins' frameworks have helped physicians, public health professionals, and healthcare leaders become more confident and effective communicators, often with results they can see quickly.
We cannot afford to skip storytelling.Â
In a field where public trust is essential, the ability to communicate your work in plain, compelling language is just as important as the work itself.
The "tree tale" approach grounds audiences in individual experience.Â
Stories rooted in a specific person at a specific moment in time are powerful because they create emotional connection before introducing data or broader context.
Zoom out from the individual story to reach policy-level audiences.Â
When your audience is a legislature or organizational leadership, connecting individual narratives to population-level data is what makes stories persuasive at scale.
Practice accelerates impact.Â
Professionals who begin applying even basic storytelling frameworks see results faster than they expect. You do not need to master the skill before you start using it.
Storytelling bridges the public health communication gap.Â
The space between what professionals know and what communities, patients, and policymakers understand is exactly where storytelling does its most critical work.
"We can't afford not to tell stories." — Sally Perkins, PhD
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DrCHHuntley LLC is a public health consulting firm that specializes in epidemiology consulting, supporting large nonprofit organizations in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida that serve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). We also provide nationwide public health consulting and epidemiology consulting support to BIPOC organizations across the United States.