NARRATIVE MATTERS: Dad’s Legacy–A Story Of Aging And Policy Impact
November 20th, 2007
 by
Fitzhugh Mullan
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As many families gather for Thanksgiving this week, Health Affairs Blog would like to take this opportunity to highlight the poignant new Narrative Matters’ essay “Dad’s Legacy” [free access] in the November/December 2007 issue of Health Affairs.
“If a picture is worth one thousand words, a good story is worth many columns of statistics,” wrote the editors of Narrative Matters: The Power of the Personal Essay in Health Policy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) in the preface to the anthology of Narrative Matters essays. This sentiment captures the vision of the Narrative Matters section as it has appeared in Health Affairs for the past eight years.
To celebrate the journal’s twenty-fifth anniversary, we asked one of the section’s most successful authors to write a narrative about having written a narrative. Texas geriatrician Jerry Winakur wrote an essay titled “What Are We Going to Do with Dad?” [free access] in the July/August 2005 issue of Health Affairs. The Washington Post republished it, talk shows interviewed him, and e-mail poured in nonstop for many weeks. His essay stimulated not only sympathy but considerable debate about the many policy issues surrounding aging, family roles, and the health care system raised by his story; as a policy narrative, it became the grist of policy deliberation and the precursor to political action. Winakur’s new essay is a reflection on his literary/policy journey and a tribute to the power of the policy narrative.
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