Social Insight & Advocacy
branch 3
This branch explores how learning, health, and lived experience intersect within larger social systems.
Groundwork Studios’ social insight and advocacy work focuses on making complex, often hidden dynamics more visible — particularly in healthcare spaces where power, identity, and access deeply shape outcomes. Through education, storytelling, and dialogue, we aim to surface patterns that are too often normalized or overlooked, and to create learning experiences that invite reflection, accountability, and change.
This work is grounded in sociology, education, and real human stories.
What We Do
This branch centers on learning in context — examining how systems, identities, and structures shape individual experience, especially in healthcare.
Our work includes:
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Educational content and learning experiences focused on health equity and social context
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Story-driven inquiry that elevates lived experience as a source of knowledge
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Community learning spaces that support reflection and shared understanding
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Advocacy-oriented education aimed at cultural awareness and systemic improvement
While still in development, this branch reflects a long-standing commitment to examining how responsibility, care, and power are distributed — and how learning can shift that balance.
What We Prioritize
Bridging systems and stories
We connect individual narratives to broader social patterns, helping people see how personal experiences are shaped by larger forces.
Making complexity approachable
We translate sociological and medical concepts into language that is accessible, human, and grounded.
Educational storytelling
We use narrative as a learning tool — not for spectacle, but for understanding, empathy, and insight.
Holding nuance with care
We design learning spaces that acknowledge discomfort, ambiguity, and responsibility without simplifying or blaming.
The "Third Branch" Journey
This branch grew slowly — through moments that stayed with me long after they passed.
One of the earliest was my work as a standardized patient at a medical center, where I portrayed individuals with various health concerns to help medical students learn clinical and interpersonal skills. One scenario involved a patient seeking birth control — but beneath the surface, she was navigating a controlling and unsafe relationship. The learning objective was subtle. Only a small percentage of students recognized the signals well enough to offer resources for domestic abuse.
Later, in my instructional design career, I spent years developing continuing medical education. I worked on learning experiences focused on cultural competency in healthcare, including education for gynecologic oncologists providing care to trans and nonbinary patients. Alongside this work, I carried my own family history of chronic illness — and my own complicated experiences as a patient.
During my graduate studies, I gravitated toward medical sociology, drawn to questions about power, responsibility, and access in healthcare systems. Over time, these experiences converged into a clear conviction: while individuals — especially women — are often told to advocate for themselves, the responsibility for better care cannot rest solely on patients. Systems and providers must do better, too.
This branch exists to explore that tension — and to use learning, storytelling, and dialogue to create ripples that move beyond individual self-advocacy toward systemic awareness and change.
—Allison
Services & Projects (In Progress)
This branch is currently unfolding. Planned and emerging initiatives include:
A Storytelling Focused Podcast
Featuring conversations with women about healthcare experiences, alongside clinicians, researchers, and advocates
Community Learning Spaces
Opportunities for shared reflection, dialogue, and sense-making around health, identity, and care
Healthcare Advocacy Work
Learning experiences aimed at improving awareness, cultural competency, and accountability in healthcare systems
This work is intentionally growing with care and integrity.