Creating “PEACH Clips: Empowering Sustainable Health Care Through Knowledge and Action”: A Case for the Use of Digital Story Telling in Climate Action Communication Strategies

Health care systems significantly contribute to environmental degradation, yet clinicians often lack clear and actionable guidance on how to implement sustainable practices. PEACH Health Ontario (Partnerships for Environmental Action by Communities within Healthcare systems) develops tailored educational tools, including specialty-specific guidebooks, to support health care climate action. In 2023, PEACH adopted Digital Storytelling (DST) as a novel knowledge translation strategy to communicate its mission, highlight its guidebook development process, and showcase how to navigate PEACH guidebooks. DST, an art-based method using multimedia narratives, enables complex concepts to be conveyed through personal, engaging, and memorable formats. The research team followed the general steps of DST content development and worked with a consultant to create three short videos. Using the Knowledge-to-Action framework, facilitators captured and thematically analyzed detailed field notes from participant reflections on PEACH's identity, legacy, and guidebook utility. A consultant specializing in health care-climate communication then refined these ideas, identified priority content, guided script and media development, and created a communication dissemination plan to maximize audience engagement. Iterative review cycles ensured videos accurately represented participant perspectives and aligned with PEACH's goals. Our findings suggest that DST, when combined with strategic collaboration, can effectively enhance the design of climate-health communication initiatives, foster stakeholder engagement, and personalize sustainability narratives within health care. This methodology offers a replicable model for other organizations seeking to mobilize climate action information into real-world practice. Future research should assess DST's impact on audience engagement and associated behavioral changes in climate-health information contexts.