case studies
Building Trust at Scale Through Community-Based Outreach
the Challenge
During the COVID-19 public health emergency, one of the biggest barriers to engagement was not simply lack of information. It was lack of trust. In many communities, traditional top-down government messaging was not enough to overcome skepticism, answer urgent questions, or help people feel confident participating in response efforts. Reaching people effectively required more than broad public messaging. It required a communications model built around credibility, relationships, and trusted local networks.
the Approach
To meet that challenge, we helped support a trust-based, community-centered outreach model that extended beyond institutional channels and into the places where trust already existed. The effort engaged community health workers, patient navigators, trusted local influencers, and religious community health coalitions across the country. These messengers were able to meet people where they were, answer questions in real time, address concerns directly, and create space for informed decision-making rooted in trust rather than authority alone.
the Impact
This approach allowed the work to scale in a meaningful way. The outreach effort generated more than 6 million in-person touchpoints and led to more than 395,000 referrals for monoclonal antibody treatment. These outcomes reflected more than reach alone. They demonstrated what is possible when communication is built around how people actually make decisions: through relationships, lived experience, and sources they see as credible. The model also helped strengthen public participation in critical COVID-19 response efforts, including community engagement connected to vaccine outreach and research participation.
the Takeaway
Strong communication is not just about distributing information more widely. Organizations must build the conditions for people to hear it, trust it, and act on it. When organizations understand where trust lives and design outreach accordingly, they can reach people conventional communications often miss.
Protecting Access to Life-Sustaining Care During the Pandemic
the Challenge
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Medicare-funded independent transportation providers stopped transporting dialysis patients because they were deemed “high risk.” That decision put some of the most medically vulnerable patients in our country in immediate danger. Dialysis is not optional care. It is life-sustaining treatment, and missed appointments can quickly become a matter of life or death. At the very moment patients needed reliability most, a critical access system failed.
the Approach
We moved quickly to build a multi-state emergency response to protect continuity of care. Working across sectors and jurisdictions, we brought together public transit authorities, senior centers, and churches across 13 states to create a coordinated stop-gap transportation network for dialysis patients who had been left without safe, dependable rides to treatment.
This work required more than logistics. It required coalition-building, rapid coordination, cross-sector problem solving, and the ability to align public-serving institutions around an urgent, high-stakes need. By organizing trusted local partners into a functional emergency network, we helped stand up a practical solution where existing systems had broken down.
the Impact
That effort helped protect the care of 132,000 renal dialysis patients across 13 states. In a moment of widespread disruption and institutional retreat, the coalition ensured that vulnerable patients could continue reaching life-sustaining dialysis appointments instead of being left without options.
This was not simply a transportation fix. It was a continuity-of-care intervention that protected access to essential medical treatment for thousands of people whose health and survival depended on it. It demonstrated the power of decisive leadership, strategic coalition-building, and community-centered problem solving in a crisis.
the Takeaway
This case reflects a core principle of Explainer Civic Solutions: when systems fail, strategy, coordination, and trusted partnerships become essential infrastructure. Strong public-interest leadership is not just about communicating well. It is about mobilizing the right people, building workable solutions under pressure, and protecting communities when the stakes are highest.