Power to Decide’s Culture Change Work

Shaping Storytelling for a Generation

As part of our overall integrated effort, Power to Decide’s pop culture partnerships have helped drive historic declines in teen and unplanned pregnancy over the past two decades, shifting the norm away from a “prevention” frame and toward the positive message that all people should have the power to decide if, when, and under what circumstances to get pregnant and have a child. But progress is not victory: we have more work to do, particularly in advancing health equity and supporting people of color, people with low incomes, and people in rural communities.

Here are eight principles that guide our culture change work at the individual and systemic levels:

1. Informing audiences.
2. Sparking meaningful conversations.
3. Personalizing risk and protective factors so audiences relate to characters and situations.
4. Normalizing important themes (contraceptive use, abortion care, and health equity).
5. Setting social scripts about the power to decide and reproductive well-being.
6. Modeling positive behavior/systems in relatable scenarios; showing audiences what consequences of inequity look like.
7. Helping audiences think about how they would handle a situation before they’re in it.
8. Bringing underrepresented voices and perspectives in to shape the conversation.