On June 12, the Health Action Alliance joined the Impact Guild to examine "Health in the Age of Influence.” Health Action Alliance co-founder and co-CEO Stephen Massey moderated the virtual session, opening with a question that shaped the hour: in a media environment defined by fragmented trust and recommendation-based algorithms, how do health communicators actually reach people?

The answer, the roundtable made clear, has less to do with any single message or campaign and more to do with the infrastructure behind it.

Trust Has Shifted. So Has the Work.

New data from Harvard University and the de Beaumont Foundation shows that half of Americans now trust health recommendations from the CDC, a 27-percentage-point drop in a single year. At the same time, conversations about health are growing, as people are seeking guidance from friends, family, creators, podcasts, and AI chatbots in increasing numbers.

"Trust hasn't collapsed," Massey said. "It moved. Authority is no longer granted by a credential. It's earned through a relationship."

That shift has real implications for how health communicators build campaigns, choose messengers, and invest over time.

What Practitioners Are Doing Differently

Ashwath Narayanan, founder and CEO of Social Currant, described how recommendation-based algorithms have changed who holds trust in public life. Audiences increasingly follow lifestyle creators, parent bloggers, and people with lived experience over institutional voices, and the most effective health campaigns are starting to reflect that.

His advice to practitioners is to test more and overthink less. "The organizations that are breaking through aren't starting with one perfect message. They're starting with many, and learning what resonates in the real world, and doubling down on what works."

Samantha Stokes, who leads Multicultural Media Partnerships and Influencer Engagement at Gilead Sciences and is a founding partner of the Hollywood + HIV Collective, spoke to what it takes to reach people on HIV, which is an issue shaped by decades of stigma that other health topics don't carry.

"Stigma equals silence, and silence equals shame," Stokes said. "When people are in that space, they are not engaging in care or in conversations about prevention, testing, or treatment. Addressing stigma isn't step three in our strategy. It's step one."

Stokes described a multi-platform approach built around reaching priority populations where they already are — at concerts, film premieres, on social media, and in community spaces. Examples included a partnership with filmmaker Nathan Hale Williams on "90 Days," a short film with an HIV storyline that screened at HBCUs, and a 30-day campaign with Grammy-winning artist Raheem Devine that reached more than 100,000 women across two campaigns on PrEP awareness and U=U. She also spoke to the value of long-term investment in individual ambassadors living with HIV, and building their platforms, their confidence, and their ability to engage their own communities over time.

Ashley Kolaya, executive director of the Mental Health Storytelling Initiative, described a parallel evolution on the mental health side. The initiative began by bringing credentialed experts into writers' rooms to support more authentic TV storylines, but has since expanded toward building narrative infrastructure and broadening who gets recognized as an expert.

"Celebrity disclosure opens doors," Kolaya said. "But if the infrastructure isn't there to support what follows, those moments don't become movements." Her organization now builds digital storytelling guides for content creators talking about mental health, helping them share their own experiences, and works through a coalitional model that brings together storytellers, studios, agencies, and communities.

Campaigns End. Infrastructure Doesn't.

Across all three conversations, a consistent theme emerged: the communicators making the most progress are not just running better campaigns. They are building the connective tissue, including trusted messengers, long-term relationships, and community infrastructure, which keeps working after the campaign ends.

That is the work the Health Action Alliance is doing through the U.S. Business Action to End HIV coalition and the Hollywood + HIV Collective. We are working to connect employers, storytellers, healthcare providers, and communities in ways that outlast any single funding cycle.

To learn more or get involved, visit healthaction.org/hollywood-hiv. The Hollywood + HIV Collective is made possible by support from Presenting Sponsor, ViiV Healthcare and Collective Sponsor, Gilead Sciences.

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About U.S. Business Action to End HIV

U.S. Business Action to End HIV was founded in 2022 by the Health Action Alliance, with support from ViiV Healthcare, to mobilize the private sector to help end HIV in the U.S. We offer free tools, resources, and events to help employers educate workers, fight stigma, improve access to HIV prevention and treatment services, and build connections to the communities that need it most.‍

‍Join the Coalition today.