Narrative Matters Turns Ten
- Ellen Ficklen, Editor, Narrative Matters, Senior Editor, Health Affairs
With this issue, Health Affairs celebrates the tenth anniversary of publishing first-person Narrative Matters essays. The fact that many readers tell us it’s the first part of the journal they read is a powerful testament to the durability of the idea, which is about the power of stories and storytelling, and their role in forming policy.
The idea for Narrative Matters was originally championed by the journal’s founding editor, John Iglehart, who wrote in the July/August 1999 issue that “the voices of patients, their families, and their caregivers have often gotten lost in the shuffle” of America’s medical system and the making of health policy. He believed that the journal would be enriched by nurturing a form of health policy writing that afforded greater opportunity for new voices.
Iglehart and Narrative Matters’ original editor Fitzhugh Mullan took the idea of the personal essay in a health policy context to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Happily, Kellogg had confidence in something called …
