Impact stories: collaborative knowledge communication in action

Over the past five years, I have had the privilege of working with JBI’s communications team and our global collaborative evidence network, the JBI Collaboration, to gather, edit and publish ‘impact stories’ - narrative accounts of evidence informing real decisions, generating change and improving lives. 

Those stories now stretch from hospital wards in Guangzhou to maternity units in Lusaka and primary care clinics in Papua New Guinea. Together, they form a living archive of collaborative knowledge communication: researchers, clinicians, consumers and policymakers translating evidence with each other, not merely to each other.

This year’s World EBHC Day theme, ‘Collaborative Knowledge Communication’, offers the perfect lens to reflect on JBI’s impact stories, why they work and how to craft them with rigour, empathy and purpose.

What exactly is an ‘impact story’?

An impact story is a short, evidence-informed and subjective narrative that discusses the impact-level results from a specific context, detailing what changed, for whom and how, as a result of evidence-based action. It is different from a ‘testimonial’ (someone’s personal experience) and from a ‘case study’ (a descriptive account that might be written before, during or after a project). Impact stories typically focus on evidence-based activities, changes and outcomes and their contributions to impact, explaining their significance.

Why impact stories?

Storytelling is one of humanity’s oldest tools for sense-making. Stories are personal and bring information to life; they can break down barriers by increasing empathy and understanding in the reader. This is because a story moves people beyond research findings and allows a reader to connect with and immerse themselves in it, triggering an empathic response. Stories combine events, facts, experiences and personal narrative within the context of specific situations, which can make information more accessible to a broader audience.

Research on the science of storytelling reveals that audiences are affected in multiple, subjective ways — from belonging and identity to empathy and resonance — rather than just gaining information or being persuaded.

Our own ‘impact storytelling’ initiative began in 2019 with a simple question: after our students, members and collaborators delivered JBI training, published JBI reviews and completed JBI implementation projects, what happened next? Did they contribute to changes in policy or practice? Were projects successful? Were they sustained? Were they scaled up? If they contributed to change, what were the drivers? 

Stories helped us surface outcomes and mechanisms and, crucially, they engaged clinicians, patients and managers as co-authors of knowledge, embodying collaborative knowledge communication.

The science behind the stories: from attribution to contribution

Traditional impact frameworks, imagining linear pathways from inputs (funding) → activities (research) → outputs (guidelines, policy) → outcomes (changes to practice) → impact, are increasingly viewed as overly simplistic. Our evidence ecosystem is a complex network of people, systems and technologies. Outcomes are non-linear, take time and may be indirect. 

A more realistic view is to ask how our work contributes to change alongside other drivers and contextual factors and to recognise that meaningful impact can be visible at many points along the journey, not just at the end. Recent approaches ask: what did our work contribute, with whom, in what context and through what activities? Impact stories operationalise this contribution mindset. 

How we built JBI’s approach

At JBI, we adapted and tested a narrative approach with colleagues across 40+ universities, hospitals and NGOs in 30+ countries from the JBI Collaboration. Our aim was simple: to capture how JBI’s EBHC model, methods and tools contribute to changes in policy, practice and outcomes, and to learn from those experiences. Through internal processes, we modified case-story methodologies to focus on impact, developed program-specific questions, created author guidelines and iterated with authors through interviews and peer review.

Examples

In China, a JBI Centre of Excellence led a national evidence implementation project across 74 hospitals to improve pre-chemotherapy assessments. Using the JBI Evidence Implementation Framework, they trained over 1,600 nurses and audited nearly 3,000 patients against 12 JBI evidence-based audit criteria. Baseline compliance was below 50%, but through education, consensus-building and patient engagement, it rose to over 96%. The project improved patient safety, documentation and nurse confidence. Seventy hospitals also completed sustainability assessments, with strong results.

A team of Brazilian researchers led a JBI mixed-methods review on the use of single-dose rifampicin for leprosy prevention. The review findings directly informed the 2018 WHO Global Leprosy Guidelines, with their work helping embed SDR-PEP as a globally recommended strategy. Follow-up studies confirmed strong acceptability among clinicians and communities. This research continues to inform Brazil’s national response and contributes to the WHO’s 2030 roadmap for neglected tropical diseases.

When we surveyed authors about their experience of developing their impact story and the value of stories as a mechanism to disseminate and communicate the impact of their work, responses from authors highlighted how the process of personal reflection, of interviewing colleagues, patients and stakeholders was valuable in and of itself to deepen their understanding of why they did the project, how they tackled it, what they learned, what others learned and the extent to which their work had contributed to change. 

"The process of writing the story has allowed me to reflect on the implementation process of the whole project again and what I have learned, to apply next time."

"Collecting data, reviewing results and interviewing my colleagues and other stakeholders in the development of this story made me realise just how much has changed since our first rapid cycle project two years ago."

Other responses related to the opportunities that the publication and dissemination of these stories have led to: 

"Sharing our impact stories by WeChat has helped to build capacity for evidence-based nursing in China, because they highlight best practices and introduce EBP and what can be achieved with EBP to clinical nurses, who are not researchers."

For many of our partners in low-resource settings who struggle with institutional support for undertaking EBP activities, the feedback has been that the publication of their stories on JBI’s website is seen as international recognition of their work and has been used successfully as an advocacy tool for local recognition and has led to funding opportunities:

"With our stories published on the JBI website, this is international recognition of our work that has led to praise and encouragement from hospital leaders. These leaders are the key stakeholders for us conducting EBP activities in the future."

Anatomy of a strong impact story

Drawing on your experience, here’s how to craft stories that communicate impact.

1. Purpose & audience. Be clear why you’re telling the story (inform, persuade, advocate) and who needs to hear it (patients, peers, managers, policymakers, funders). Tailor tone, detail and language accordingly.

2. Problem & context. Open with the ‘why’, grounding the issue in local realities (setting, culture, resources) so readers can visualise the situation.

3. Shape your narrative. A good story defines relationships, a sequence of events, introduces the problem and intervention(s), the barriers and enablers and the lessons learned and uses the voices of interest holders (with their consent), as these are the elements that are likely to be remembered as a complex whole.

4. Make collaboration visible. Show how patients, clinicians, managers, policymakers and/or community partners contributed, co-designed, implemented, adapted or advocated.

5. What did you do? Name the methods, tools, training, activities, interventions and how they influenced decisions or actions.

6. Balanced evidence. Pair quantitative or audit results with qualitative insights (quotes from peers, staff, patients, leaders) to show what changed, for whom and why it matters.

7. Credible evaluation. Explain how you assessed change (documents, interviews, surveys), describe enablers/barriers, acknowledge uncertainty and use contribution, not attribution, language.

8. Design for accessibility. Write in plain language with short paragraphs; use descriptive in-text links and responsible images. Secure permissions and consent.

9. Close the loop. State what will be sustained or scaled, next steps and actionable take-home messages so others can adapt your lessons.

What the stories taught us

Across dozens of published stories, several themes recur:

• Context drives feasibility. Policy, staffing, leadership, culture and resources shape the evidence ecosystem. Stories surface these levers, the barriers and facilitators, in ways that static reports cannot.
   
• Collaboration multiplies impact. Co-produced stories highlight the contributions of multiple actors and help connect the dots across siloed programs. They are particularly effective when they highlight both direct and diffuse outcomes, for example, unexpected improvements in communication between nurses and patients alongside clinical metrics.
   
• The process is formative. Authors frequently report that the reflective work of interviewing stakeholders and reviewing data clarifies why change happened and strengthens future projects. Several partners have used their published stories as advocacy tools for local recognition and funding — an impact on impact.
   
• Stories reach new audiences. In some contexts, impact stories shared on local platforms (e.g. WeChat) have reached tens of thousands of readers, building capacity by introducing evidence-based practices to clinicians who typically do not read research. 

These lessons echo the literature: impact is multifaceted and storytelling’s value often lies in resonance, identification and meaning-making as much as information transfer.

Towards a culture of collaborative knowledge communication

World EBHC Day encourages us to keep evidence at the forefront and to renew our commitment to connecting research with practice in meaningful ways. Impact stories are one way we can achieve this — through co-created, context-rich narratives that respect complexity, value lived experiences and highlight contributions. When collected across a global evidence network, these stories also become a shared learning resource — a colourful mosaic of global impact.

References

Greenhalgh, T., Raftery, J., Hanney, S., & Glover, M. (2016). Research impact: a narrative review. BMC Medicine, 14(1), 78.

Green, S. J., Grorud-Colvert, K., & Mannix, H. (2018). Uniting science and stories: perspectives on the value of storytelling for communicating science. Facets, 3(1), 164-173.

Pilla, B., Scott, A.M., & Jordan, Z. (2020). If not now, when? Time to focus on ‘evidence to impact’. JBI Evidence Synthesis, 18(10), 2104–2105. 

Sickler, J. and Lentzner, M. (2022). The audience experience of science storytelling: impact profiles from a Q methodology study. JCOM 21(01), A03. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21010203

Kok, M. O., & Schuit, A. J. (2012). Contribution mapping: a method for mapping the contribution of research to enhance its impact. Health Research Policy and Systems, 10(1), 21.

To link to this article - DOI: https://doi.org/10.70253/HJEL4839

Conflict of interest

Bianca is a member of the World EBHC Day Steering Committee.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this World EBHC Day Blog, as well as any errors or omissions, are the sole responsibility of the author and do not represent the views of the World EBHC Day Steering Committee, Official Partners or Sponsors; nor does it imply endorsement by the aforementioned parties.