Do you want to avoid the hassle of traveling with your printed poster? IAPHS2026 is pleased to make poster printing available to you through our supplier PosterSessionOnline. Your poster will be professionally reviewed, printed and shipped directly to Portland and you will be able to pick it up from the Poster desk. Click here to learn more.
Primary Submission Category: Place/Communities
Narrative Power to Advance Health Equity: Results from Survey Research to Support Tenant Organizing
Authors: Yusra Murad, Jamila Michener, Norman Porticella,
Presenting Author: Yusra Murad*
Growing evidence across academia and community organizations is illustrative of the power of narratives in shifting public perception about health and housing. In the U.S., dominant narratives center the wealth and power associated with homeownership, while overlooking dire conditions facing tenants – particularly within marginalized communities. But a rising tenant movement is challenging these narratives. While existing research suggests that such alternative narratives can shift how the public contextualizes the “housing crisis” and the health inequities inherent to it, there is a gap in evidence measuring how these narratives shape outcomes most relevant to tenant organizers.
Alongside a community partner which convenes tenant organizations, we designed this experiment to test how alternative narratives about housing, wealth and inequality shape beliefs and intentions toward engaging with the housing system. We explore the effects of three alternative narratives on intentions to advocate and organize; perceptions of solidarity between renters and homeowners; and perceptions of blame, relative to a dominant narrative and a no-exposure control group.
We used a randomized, between-subjects design. Participants were recruited using YouGov (n = 4,500) and randomly assigned to one of five conditions (control, dominant narrative, and three alternative narrative conditions). The alternative conditions framed the housing crisis in the context of an unequal economy, connecting the struggles of homeowners and tenants alike.
Preliminary findings found evidence consistent with our hypotheses; alternative narratives can motivate tenant-owner solidarity and intentions to advocate, increase support for health-protective housing policies, and shift attributions of blame for housing issues to political and economic institutions, rather than individuals.
Our results suggest alternative narratives stemming from tenant organizers can shift public consciousness about the housing crisis, and indicate the potential for survey research as a rapidly responsive tool to sharpen narrative strategy for community organizations in their ongoing efforts to unite people for the purposes of advancing population health and housing justice.