Up close and personal with the realities motivating the public policy work of The CommonWealth Fund
The Commonwealth Fund hired me as an independent producer to create videos featuring people whose poignant stories underline the urgent need for health care policy reforms.
How High Needs/High Costs Patients Cope
Background
When a person’s medical health requires ongoing treatment, monitoring for three or more chronic diseases, and accommodations for functional limitations, they are considered a “High Needs, High Costs” patient.
The people who find themselves in this patient population are often overlooked as the high costs of their care, more than four times the average health care consumer in the United States, overshadow their needs. Making things worse, their ability to advocate for themselves is often compromised by their conditions.
As The CommonWealth Fund strives to develop a policy response to improve health care outcomes for this unique population, it also faces a communications challenge—how to advocate for patients who are primarily known in terms of their costs.
The CommonWealth Fund approached me to humanize the consequences of structural impediments to optimal and cost-effective care for patients with chronic health conditions.
storytelling approach
Patients with complex and constant medical needs feel vulnerable. On top of that, their struggles with poverty, with stigma associated with chronic illness, and with the absence of consistent support exacerbate their health issues. I knew that it would be important to meet with these subjects in their homes, and requested that trusted supporters be present before I arrived and remain during our interviews. I aimed for a relaxed, natural aesthetic, professional but not fussy. And I simply let the camera run as I sat to the side and spoke with them informally about their experiences.
All of my work for The CommonWealth Fund has a gravity to it. I always feel challenged and enriched by their projects.
“Adam created beautifully shot and moving videos that achieved our goals for these high-profile projects. He helped us strategize about how to approach the projects from branding and messaging perspectives and was entrusted with working independently.
“Thanks to his careful preparation and passionate execution, Adam elicited just the right responses from both experienced leaders in health policy and patients with a wide variety of backgrounds and lived experiences.
“I thoroughly enjoyed working with Adam because of his dedication, can-do spirit, and professionalism. He would be an able and talented contributor to any communications team.”
Christine Haran, Direction of Strategic Communications, The CommonWealth Fund
The Lived Experience of Health Insurance Uncertainty
BACKGROUND
The CommonWealth Fund flew me to rural Illinois to interview people who volunteered to share their experiences with unexpectedly losing their health insurance coverage.
Health insurance uncertainty is mainly the long-term result of a link between employment and health insurance, an artificially incentivized phenomenon with decent intentions dating back to the middle of the 20th century.
In coming forward to recount their deeply personal stories, the interviewees humanized the persistence of a problem that plagues millions of people in the United States. These videos were developed as part of a campaign to resurface and address this stubborn public policy conundrum.
STORYTELLING APPROACH
When I interview somebody about emotional, personal stories, it’s so important to build trust. From a place of decency and respect in the first place, one should speak softly, maintain eye contact, and listen intently. When people feel genuinely seen and heard, they have an easier time mustering the courage to share their private struggles, sharing that is essential to social change. The CommonWealth Fund leverages stories like these to persuade policy makers to strike at the root causes of unnecessary hardships affecting millions of Americans.
I decided to produce the videos in black and white both to match the intimacy of the stories and to emphasize their common purpose with a single, unobtrusive, stylistic theme.
Celebrating the Past, Fighting for the Future
BACKGROUND
I was honored when The CommonWealth Fund asked me to produce its centerpiece Centennial video to celebrate this extraordinary milestone.
production approach
The principal technical challenge of producing this video: I would be co-interviewing ten members of its Board of Trustees in a two day span using a single room.
Given the time limits with each Trustee, I researched each participant and had my questions for them prepared well in advance.
It would have been significantly easier to use a step-and-repeat setup, but the prospect of ten talking heads materializing in front of an identical background for this high-profile video was unacceptable to me. I mapped out an exact order of spaces within the room I would use to give each interview a distinct background. During the five minutes between the interviews, I hustled to reposition my setup, dial in lighting, check backgrounds, and maintain a safely navigable set.
It came as no surprise that the morning of the first day of the shoot, loud construction on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk directly under the room where we were shooting started one hour before the first interview continued throughout the day.
I managed to keep that noise out of the recording by using a mix of highly directional microphones, recording extensive room tone during quiet breaks, and placing creative soundproofing to deflect and soften cracks and pops so they would be easier to remove in post-production.
I used slider moves to add production value to the interviews and B-Roll, and shot wide open with prime lenses in 2k resolution for HD delivery to ensure a premium look and feel. Deliverable versions of the video were primarily deployed on the internet, but also intended for large screen projection at a celebratory event.
The final cut blends voiceovers, photographic references to noteworthy highlights and accomplishments, and the Trustees’ interviews, establishing how its consistent record of achievement has primed The CommonWealth Fund to improve health care policy in America during its next hundred years.