In this study I explored the storying of health in the midst of Appalachian women living in poverty. The patients who use the free medical services offered by the Ohio University College of Medicine’s Community Health Programs (CHP) have tainted and damaged identities from the stigma and stereotypes associated with living in poverty. They are marginalized and rendered virtually (in)visible—the skeletons in the poverty closet of the United States.
The CHP advances an alternative script of health care by breaking down the barriers (lack of money/resources, fear, stigma, pride, flexibility, mobility, and health legacies) which prevent or impede their patients from accessing the free and reduced health care they so desperately need. Through this alternative script of care, CHP staff members challenge the status quo of traditional biomedical care and they work to narrow the chasm of visible (in)visibility their patients straddle daily.
By drawing on feminist and narrative sensibilities, I provide a rich ethnographic account of how a counter-narrative of medicine—an alternative web of relations among characters who are living out plots that differ from hegemonic ones—can disrupt the dominant scripts so often taken for granted as natural and fixed, in this case scripts that accompany the biomedical model. Collectively, these insights contribute new knowledge to the body of work in health communication by exploring the standpoints of those who have been rendered invisible through the hegemonic discourses and practices associated with traditional biomedical care.
Three methodologies were used to collect discourse related to the Community Health Program, poverty, and the storied nature of health and healing. These methodologies were: Informal and in-depth interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. The results are encompassed in three themes which include discussions of how narrative activity works to foster healing and empowerment, how the storied nature of health care is shaped by the mobile nature of the health clinics, and what role counter-narratives play in challenging the traditional biomedical and dominant scripts. Practical implications for the CHP, limitations, and directions for future research are also discussed.