A Colorado County Reimagines Public Health Storytelling

The Instagram model poses against a backdrop of mountains, dressed in colors that mirror flowers in the foreground. Her lips pout as she sprays the product she’s promoting. Not a fragrance, but a public health tool: mosquito repellent.

The image was posted by the Jefferson County, Colo., public health department as part of a West Nile virus campaign. It’s one of several public health campaigns that have begun earning the agency national attention for bringing a lighter, more humorous tone to its messaging.

As a result of the new campaigns, social media impressions (the number of times content was seen) increased as much as fivefold in 2025. Earned media placements have more than doubled since 2023, says Sarah Story, the department’s executive director.

Like all public health departments, Jefferson County’s wants to improve health and lengthen lives, Story says. But at present, its “North Star” is establishing trust. Public confidence in public health departments took a hit during the pandemic — in part because of missteps in responding to a new and deadly virus, in part because social media criticism and misinformation shadowed every step they took.

“We have a job to do right now,” Story says. “It’s important for people to trust that when we speak, we mean what we say, and we say what we mean.”

Story worked in public health in Missouri before she came to Colorado, but in between she led strategic communications for a technology startup that marketed to public health customers. She was still wearing her communications hat when she arrived in Jefferson County; it was one reason the county wanted her.

“What we’re doing is not rocket science, it’s just standard marketing,” Story says. “We are using the same tools that any company that’s trying to sell you something is using.”

This work is an example of a movement to reconsider what it means for public health — or any government agency, for that matter — to tell its story.

Outside the Box

Story had funds to make small additions to her communications team, including a social media specialist and an earned media specialist. The people she chose weren’t educated in public health. “We hired people who were really, really good at their talent or skill,” she says. “They’re not coming in with jargon or acronyms; they’re coming with engaging ideas and media savvy.”

A big misconception about storytelling is that it’s all about “feelings,” Story says. There’s a science to it, a strategy.

A campaign to encourage more county residents to take advantage of the Earned Income Tax Credit is a case in point. Low-income families can claim this credit when filing their taxes and receive a refund. Multiple studies have linked it to health benefits, especially for infants and mothers, but each year an estimated 5 to 7 million people fail to claim it.

Story’s team created animated videos for the department’s social media accounts that showed a piggy bank navigating a “house of horrors,” symbolizing tax preparers or payday loan companies overcharging for help accessing the credit. They distributed 1,000 plastic pigs in the county with QR codes that drove people to the campaign site. Click-through rates to a nonprofit partner that provides tax assistance went up 2,000 percent, Story says.

The “fashion shoot” images in the West Nile virus campaign were accompanied by data-informed distribution of DEET mosquito repellent in areas with concentrations of older adults. (The risk of developing a dangerous case of West Nile disease is as much as 20 times greater for those 65 or older.)

Big companies use these kinds of multimodal strategies to tell the story of their brands. “We’re just following in the footsteps of every big global corporation, just on a smaller scale,” Story says.

The department uses Instagram and LinkedIn, with different storytelling strategies for each. Instagram posts are almost daily and mix memes and humor with informational content. The LinkedIn account focuses on thought leadership, Story says.

The agency launched a youth campaign on sexually transmitted infections early in Story’s tenure. It pushed boundaries by using frank descriptions of risky behavior and imagery of emojis used in suggestive messaging. Colleagues in other communities told Story they’d never be allowed to do something similar, and it made some in her own community uncomfortable, but the campaign resulted in a 300 percent increase in youth sign-ups for sexual health services.

What Is a “Story”?

Cultural touchstones, nostalgia and humor can draw in people who might otherwise scroll past or tune out traditional government messaging, says Noella Rios, the department’s public affairs manager. When people see something they enjoy, she says, they are more open to information and more likely to trust the source that’s delivering that information.

Rios was part of a group of public health professionals, academics and practitioners who attended a recent five-week storytelling skills-building course at the Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Advocacy. Public health workers sometimes assume that everyone should listen to them because they work for the public good, says Tesfa Alexander, the center’s deputy director.

It’s a mistake to assume that the general public values the things public health workers value, Alexander says. These messages need to be sold to the average consumer, and public health education doesn’t generally include training in sales.

Alexander began his career at a Madison Avenue marketing agency. Like Story, he wants to bring proven marketing techniques into health communication. The speakers he brought in for the training Rios attended included the head of marketing for L’Oreal, the creative director for Getty Images and the former director of the PBS News Hour.

“We have been taught that the science and data tell the story,” he says. “Papers don’t talk, data don’t talk.” It’s emotion that moves people to action, and data rarely evokes emotion, he says. “There has to be a person at the center of the story, and there has to be some sort of conflict or tension that needs to be overcome within that story,” Alexander says.

For Rios, this means starting a campaign by thinking about who the department is fighting for. Then, they have to connect that to the data and systems behind an issue. “Design or plan for connection first, education second,” she says. “That’s how we tackle it.”

People spend hours watching content on their phones, Story says. “Why do we think they won’t pay attention to us? Maybe we’re just not speaking the right language.”