The Human Story Behind the Data

How we helped CIHI show frontline staff, health leaders, and policymakers what better data looks like in real care

Client: Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)
Featured partner: Perley Health, Ottawa
Format: Documentary-style video case study
Audiences: Frontline health care workers, health system leaders, policymakers, and the public
Our role: Narrative strategy, stakeholder alignment, on-site production, filming, and accessible post-production

Overview

Health data can change how care is delivered. The difficulty is getting people to see that change when all they’re shown is a chart.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) provides standardized data that helps improve health care, health system performance, and population health across Canada. CIHI needed a clearer way to show the real-world value of two of its tools to a wide range of people, from nurses on the floor to the leaders who shape policy.
We worked with CIHI to create Data in Action, a short video that follows one long-term care home through a real change in practice. The story is told by the people who lived it, and it shows how better data led to better care.

The challenge

CIHI’s interRAI assessment and the interRAI Reporting System (IRRS) help care teams track residents’ health over time and spot problems early. The value was clear to the people who already used them. It was much harder to explain to everyone else.

CIHI had to reach four very different audiences at once:

Frontline workers, who needed to see that the tools could make their work easier and their care better
Health system leaders, who needed confidence that the tools were worth the effort to adopt
Policymakers, who needed evidence they could trust and act on
The public, who needed to understand why health data matters to them at all

Technical reports and statistics carry accuracy well. They rarely carry meaning to people outside the data world. A frontline nurse and a policymaker read the same number very differently, and neither of them feels much from it.

The real problem underneath

The stated need was a video. Underneath that sat a harder question: how do you build trust in a data tool with people who don’t think in data?
From what we’ve seen, health system communication often stalls at this exact point. The evidence is solid, but it stays inside the organization that produced it. People can’t picture what the numbers mean for a resident, a shift, or a care team, so the tool feels abstract and easy to put off.
CIHI didn’t need more information. It needed a story that made the information real enough to act on, without losing the accuracy its reputation depends on.

Our approach

Finding the right story
We started by looking for a single, specific example that every audience could follow. Perley Health in Ottawa had used CIHI’s data to rebuild its skin and wound care program. The story had a clear before and after, real outcomes, and people willing to speak about it honestly.
One focused story was a deliberate choice. A broad overview of the tools would have tried to serve every audience and reached none of them well.

Bringing stakeholders together
A project like this involves CIHI, a care home, frontline staff, and residents, and each group has its own concerns. We worked to bring them into the same conversation early. That meant encouraging open dialogue about what each group needed the story to show, and what it needed to avoid.

This step takes care. When residents share personal experiences of pain and illness, their dignity has to come first. Getting agreement before filming meant the final piece reflected everyone’s input, and nobody felt their story had been used without care.

Letting the people speak for themselves

Gerard Cheong, an Aurora partner, led the creative direction. Early on, he made a case for leaving out a voiceover entirely.
A narrator would have made the video easier to control. It also would have put a layer between the audience and the people who experienced the change. Instead, we shaped the video around direct testimony from Perley Health staff and residents. For a data organization, that choice matters. Trust in evidence grows when people hear it confirmed by those closest to the care.
We then managed the full production, from narrative planning and on-site logistics to filming and accessible post-production, so the thinking stayed intact from the first conversation to the final edit.