Looking back at our notebooks from the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences (IAPHS) annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, a few lines have exclamation points (Ariela) or extra underlines and stars (Jess). So, we decided to share a few things we learned and are thinking about at the Leah Zallman Center for Immigrant Health Research (LZC) while we can still make sense of our pages of notes.
The theme at IAPHS this year was “reimagining population health science to build trust and influence.” The keynote speakers and panelists spoke a lot about trust, and how we can share results from our studies in ways that actually inform policy. We were impressed by the relevance of the theme to our work at LZC, especially as co-PIs on our two-year study on narratives about immigrants and healthcare in Massachusetts.
One line says, “stories about landscapes!” The exclamation point came during a session on narratives, when Dr. Lori Dorfman talked about telling stories about landscapes and not just individuals. When we only tell one person’s story, it’s easy for people to see the problem as that person’s problem. If we want anyone to look past personal responsibility, we have to connect that person to their environment, the policies and systems around them.
A starred line says “trustworthiness v. trust.” Several speakers spoke about the challenges social scientists face establishing trust within our current polarized media landscape. We were trained to believe that trust is simple: present high-quality data, and people will follow the science. But we know—and constantly need to remind ourselves—it just doesn’t work that way.
Dr. Jennifer Karas Montez explained that people don’t necessarily mistrust science or scientists; they mistrust institutions. If we want to be trusted we first have to be trustworthy. That starts with engaging with communities, listening, and responding to what people need. Dr. Salma Abdalla framed our challenge as the messy practice of sharing social scientific findings in a context where we must also acknowledge that there are valid reasons people may disagree on politicized issues and have different worldviews.
Thinking about our work at the Institute for Community Health, we feel proud to be part of an organization that is already working this way with community partners. We don’t come to the table assuming we know all the answers. We say, “let’s figure this out together.” This makes all the difference. We ask for trust because we engage from a place of humility, owning what we know and what we don’t know. We also trust our partners to do the same, which helps us tell bigger stories, because our partners are the ones who know what the landscape looks and feels like.
We also know we can do better. Brinda Adhikari urged us to engage from a place of mutual vulnerability and to demonstrate that what we learn from each other—including people we may not agree with—will not be used against people. Moving forward, we will continue to build trust pathways and show that we are in this work to build greater understanding, mutual benefit, and collective well-being. Conferences are supposed to make us want to do a better job and remind us that our work matters, and this one did.