“Policymakers Need to See This!”: Dissemination and Evaluation of a Multisite Photovoice Project on the Opioid Epidemic

The use of Photovoice methods to identify and address public health challenges has evolved since this participatory action research method’s inception in the 1990s. However, there is a notable lack of research on the dissemination of Photovoice findings to promote community action and change. This study evaluates audience and Photovoice participants’ experiences of dissemination events presenting the results of 21 Photovoice projects that supplemented the HEALing Communities Study (HCS), a multistate community-based study of strategies to reduce opioid overdose deaths. The Photovoice projects captured the perspectives of people with lived experience of substance use disorder and front-line providers regarding their communities’ responses to the opioid epidemic. This article describes the multiple artifact types and dissemination formats co-created by HEALing Communities Study researchers and Photovoice project participants to share photographs, captions, and insights. In addition, the study reports the evaluation results from attendees of more than 24 local, state, and national events that exhibited and presented on the Photovoice projects. These evaluations assessed whether attendees’ experiences at the events influenced their critical consciousness of and intention to act to address their communities’ concerns with substance use disorder. Respondents encouraged continued efforts to educate community members, especially policymakers, from the perspective of those most impacted by substance use disorder. Findings from the study suggest Photovoice dissemination events may encourage attendees to engage more deeply in public health topics such as the opioid addiction crisis, which supports the critical consciousness model for assessing community health change initiatives.