The Entangled Health Podcast

The Entangled Health Podcast explores what is possible when we honor story as strategy. The show is hosted by Madison Murphy Barney, a public health storyteller and strategist. With her Master’s in Public Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Madison has worked with federal ministries of health, leading hospitals and healthcare systems, billion-dollar foundations, teaching hospitals, and large nonprofits to operationalize storytelling initiatives.Each episode of The Entangled Health Podcast weaves together story, strategy, and systems change. You’ll hear how organizations can use storytelling to:Build trust with communitiesReconnect staff to purposeInfluence policy and shift narrativesGenerate resources for lasting changeThis podcast is for leaders, practitioners, and dreamers who know that connection is medicine.🔗 Stay ConnectedTake the Quiz → Discover where your organization most needs storytellingLet's connect on LinkedInLean more about how

The Entangled Health Podcast is a education podcast hosted by Madison Murphy Barney, with 26 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Madison Murphy Barney hosts The Entangled Health Podcast, a education show with 26 episodes published.

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  Episode #24

  What on Earth is Organizational Doula Work?

  Sep 2, 202620 min

  What Organizational Doula Work Is Deep witnessing and accompaniment through transitions, not framework application Starts with assessment: what the organization already has, its history, cultural identity, strengths Builds emergent frameworks tailored to the specific team, broad enough to flex but tethered to history Psychological safety as a core pillar: enables trial-and-error culture and generative mistake-making Doula as “lantern holder”: outside perspective that makes sense of what teams can’t see from within Individual and collective work combined: leadership and team members addressed separately and together Tools are maps, not plans: flexible, multi-route, oriented toward a shared North star Who It’s For and Key Use Cases Teams merging, experiencing leadership ruptures, or moving toward something new Organizations sunsetting or closing, including unexpected closures Coalitions forming across very different organizations (example: North Dakota anti-trafficking coalition bringing together law enforcement, nonprofits, faith groups, government) Teams in conflict: conflict held as generative, not something to squash Ignored conflict snowballs, teams lose talent and the ability to dream together Must be witnessed from outside by someone not in the conflict Conferences and gatherings: drop-in support, workshops, helping excited collaborators ground new ideas into actionable maps before they leave -- Stay Connected Take the Quiz → Discover where your organization most needs storytelling Let's connect on LinkedIn Lean more about how we can work together at https://madisonmurphybarney.com/entangled-health Reach out with questions and inquiries at mbarney@entangledhealth.com

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  Episode #23

  Listening to the No: Alice Ely on What Community-Led Public Health Actually Requires

  Aug 19, 202636 min

  Alice Ely is one of my favorite people to talk with, and I’ve been wanting to have her on the podcast for a long time. She’s the executive director of the Public Health Council of the Upper Valley, celebrating twenty-five years of the organization she leads. She’s also the person who funded my BIPOC and queer healthcare storytelling work through the Vermont Community Health Equity Partnership a few years back, so this conversation was a real coming-full-circle moment for me. We talk about what it took for the Public Health Council to hold the VTCHEP grant in a way that served the communities it was meant for. We talk about: word-of-mouth outreach through networks the state would never have thought to use; fiscal sponsorship for organizations without institutional infrastructure; money upfront when grantees needed it; and more. We talk about qualitative data being treated as unreliable inside healthcare settings. We talk about what it means when N is too small to report. And we talk about the medicalization of public health, and what happens when community health workers never leave the institutional walls of the systems that employ them. If you’re a funder, a public health leader, a community-led practitioner, or someone trying to change how your traditionally white-led organization shows up in this work, this one is for you. -- Stay Connected Take the Quiz → Discover where your organization most needs storytelling Let's connect on LinkedIn Lean more about how we can work together at https://madisonmurphybarney.com/entangled-health Reach out with questions and inquiries at mbarney@entangledhealth.com

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  Episode #22

  A Movement, Not a Checklist: What Ethiopia Built by Listening First

  Jul 15, 202633 min

  In 2019, Ethiopia's Federal Ministry of Health was doing something nobody else had done. They were building the first national Compassionate and Respectful Care initiative woven into a federal health transformation plan. And they were building it by listening. In this episode, I sit down with three of my former colleagues from the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program to talk about our work in Ethiopia, interviewing patients, providers, community health workers, ministry officials, NGO leaders, and professional associations across Addis Ababa, Oromia, and Amhara. We talk about what we heard. That you cannot ask providers to be compassionate if the system isn't compassionate to them. That trainings alone don't hold unless leadership and culture hold them up. That compassion is subjective, which means measuring it without reducing it to a checklist requires a different kind of rigor. That the Ministry's incubation centers worked because facilities were given room to prototype in their specific contexts. We also talk about what stayed with us and the impact of watching a federal body build strategy from the ground up. This conversation is years overdue, and I'm so glad we finally had it. Guests: Yuki Davis and Matt Hughsam -- 🔗 Stay Connected Take the Quiz → Discover where your organization most needs storytelling Let's connect on LinkedIn Lean more about how we can work together at https://madisonmurphybarney.com/entangled-health Reach out with questions and inquiries at mbarney@entangledhealth.com

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  Episode #21

  The Community Remembers: What Crows Teach Us About Trust, Memory, and Showing Up

  Jul 1, 202619 min

  Crows recognize individual faces. They remember who threatened them and who helped them, and they pass that knowledge to their young, to their flock, across generations. A crow you wronged once will tell crows who've never met you to watch out. A crow you consistently fed will bring you small gifts in return. They have community memory, just like the communities we serve as health and social justice organizations. In this episode, we talk about listening fatigue, and why it's not apathy, it's the community's social intelligence functioning healthfully. We talk about what it looks like when an organization has already burned trust and what the slow road back requires. We make the case that reciprocity is earned through consistent behavior over time, not through better outreach materials or a flashier engagement strategy. If your organization has ever wondered why the community won't engage anymore, this episode is the mirror. IN THIS EPISODE Why communities carry long memories and what that means for organizational reputation. Listening fatigue as rational community self-protection, not a communication problem to solve. How consistent follow-through earns the kind of trust and intelligence no survey can surface. What collective threat response looks like in coalition work. And the case for frameworks that read context rather than running the same playbook everywhere. -- 🔗 Stay Connected Take the Quiz → Discover where your organization most needs storytelling Let's connect on LinkedIn Lean more about how we can work together at https://madisonmurphybarney.com/entangled-health Reach out with questions and inquiries at mbarney@entangledhealth.com

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  Episode #19

  The Tree of Life: What Cedar Teaches Us About Endurance in Community Work

  Jun 3, 202623 minS0

  <p>Cedar doesn't bloom and disappear. She stands, shelters, and heals, and the whole forest depends on it.</p><p>In this episode, we talk about what it takes to build narrative practice that doesn't burn out, dry up, or blow over when leadership changes or funding shifts. Cedar grows slowly, roots deeply, and provides shelter year-round. Her fallen needles feed the soil. Her oils protect her without aggression. In temperate rainforests, she's a keystone species: remove cedar, and the whole system shifts.</p><p>We make the case for evergreen narrative infrastructure over seasonal storytelling. We talk about why...

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