In July 2026, the Digital Story Lab brought StoryHelper to Makeni, in the Bombali District of Sierra Leone, for a workshop on digital storytelling for maternal health. The session was led by Sampson Kofi Adotey, a PhD student at the University of Cape Town, in collaboration with Dr Irina Catrinel Craciun, Mostafa Elgayar, and Zubair Hossain from the Department of Digital Global Public Health at the Hasso Plattner Institute.

Twenty-five participants took part — mothers, health promoters, and local community storytellers. The workshop opened by grounding StoryHelper in tools the group already used day to day, then moved through a walkthrough of the platform, showing how it captures, shapes, and shares a story in digital form.

Participants then read through a story generated with the tool and discussed how it landed and where it needed local knowledge to ring true. An open Q&A closed the session, giving the group room to raise practical questions and concerns about using StoryHelper in their own maternal health work.

Digital stories are transforming health promotion by turning evidence into engaging, shareable narratives that drive real behavior change. The StoryHelper tool lets participants design these stories efficiently — ensuring they are tailored, ethical, and impactful for diverse audiences.

In this full-day hands-on workshop at the UCL Behaviour Change Conference 2026, participants crafted digital stories using StoryHelper, guided by real-world case studies and interactive exercises. The session drew on examples from the WHO Science in 5 initiative and the CHAMPS maternal health program, showing how evidence-based storytelling works at scale across global health contexts.

The workshop was part of the annual UCL Behaviour Change Conference, which brings together industry, academia, government, and NGOs to discuss cutting-edge developments in the science and application of behaviour change to a range of global challenges.

Researchers, practitioners, and policy makers left with practical skills for leveraging digital technologies in evidence-based health promotion — and with a story ready to influence behavior in their target communities.

Workshop format

Full-day workshop · 09:30–16:30 · Guided hands-on sessions, case study analysis, live story-drafting exercises, and peer feedback rounds using the StoryHelper platform.

Hosted at University College London (UCL), the Global Health Co-Creation Lab gathered international public health professionals to explore how digital storytelling can improve health communication across diverse cultural contexts.

The lab focused on training participants to adapt evidence-based research findings into localized community narratives, with special attention to audio-enabled formats suitable for low-literacy populations and mobile-first delivery channels.

Participants developed and test-played audio narratives designed for public health campaigns, demonstrating the versatility of the StoryHelper platform in producing accessible, multi-format health communication materials.

The HPI Co-Creation Retreat in Zeist, Germany was a focused multi-day workshop bringing together local health teams, researchers, and community stakeholders. The retreat centered on co-designing health prevention campaigns using StoryHelper's interactive planning tools.

Participants piloted the platform's mind-mapping capability, allowing teams to visually map out narrative structures, identify key behavioral targets, and plan culturally appropriate intervention stories for Dutch communities.

The retreat resulted in three fully developed prevention blueprints, each validated through community feedback sessions and ready for implementation in local health programs.

The Behavior Change Conference in Lisbon brought together leading health communication researchers and practitioners from across Europe. Over two intensive days, participants worked hands-on with the StoryHelper platform to translate complex behavioral research findings into accessible, evidence-based narratives.

Key activities included structured workshops on applying the STORY-Q framework, live drafting sessions where attendees created health promotion stories for diverse demographics, and collaborative feedback rounds using the platform's built-in evaluation tools.

The conference demonstrated how structured digital storytelling can bridge the gap between academic research and public health impact, with participants producing over 15 targeted stories ready for pilot testing in their respective communities.

How can we transform health evidence into engaging digital stories that inspire meaningful behaviour change? This interactive two-day online workshop introduces three complementary approaches to designing high-quality digital stories for health: the Story-Q framework, the Story2Change model and the StoryHelper platform.

Participants bring a health communication project or challenge they are working on and develop and present their own digital story concept, with two weeks between the sessions for creative development.

The workshop is a collaboration between RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences (School of Population Health) and the Hasso Plattner Institute, organised with the Irish Global Health Network under the RCSI Societal Impact and Engagement Scheme.

More about the workshop on globalhealth.ie →