147 - Storytelling for Health Information: Building Evidence-Based Resources for Community Engagement Activities

Background: In 2020, the Network of the National Library of Medicine's All of Us National Program funded StoryCorps to develop “All Our Voices: Conversations about Health & Wellness: A Toolkit for Libraries & Community-Centered Storytelling”. The toolkit was intended to be used by public libraries and community-based organizations to plan and implement storytelling programs to inform their communities, particularly those underrepresented in biomedical research, about health topics. The toolkit provides free digital tools to record, share, and preserve community members' health and wellness stories and offer engaging programming ideas to elicit dialogue about health, well-being, and the importance of participating in biomedical research. .

Description: The toolkit pilot test design consists of three interactive virtual sessions with library staff serving rural, urban, and suburban communities. The pilot test participants are divided into two cohorts of five people. In Session 1, participants were introduced to the toolkit and the accompanying programming tools. In Session 2, they were asked to use the toolkit to plan a storytelling program at their library. They were encouraged to discuss with each other how they would use the toolkit, challenges they anticipate having, and the kinds of support they would need to successfully host a storytelling program based on the toolkit. In Session 3, participants shared their more detailed program plans with their cohorts. Throughout the pilot test, our team observed and took notes to capture the participants’ feedback and perspectives. Additionally, we used an interactive whiteboard to generate ideas from participants.

Conclusion: The toolkit pilot test aimed to collect formative evaluation data. The goal of the pilot test was to identify additional resources libraries need to successfully use the toolkit to offer programming for their populations underrepresented in biomedical research and uncover areas for toolkit improvement to make it more relevant and easier to use by library staff. Through these hands-on sessions, our team was able to build an evidence-based resource to encourage libraries to use storytelling to offer health information programming to their communities. We found participants sought more support and resources to increase buy-in from administrators and overall found the toolkit easy to use and relevant to their health programming needs.