Translating lived experience into strategy for systems change.
Narrative Justice Partners helps philanthropy, advocacy organizations, and public institutions turn community insight into narratives that drive policy change, program adoption, and lasting impact.
We do not simply tell stories.
We help institutions understand why change is not happening, what narratives are shaping beliefs and behaviors, and how lived experience can become strategic information for action.
Why We Exist
Across health, education, immigration, and social policy, institutions invest in programs, research, and advocacy designed to improve people’s lives.
But even strong solutions can stall.
Communities may not trust the systems asking them to engage. Policymakers may not feel the human urgency behind the data. Advocacy campaigns may fail to shift the dominant story. Funded programs may struggle to scale beyond pilots.
This is the narrative-to-action gap.
Narrative Justice Partners exists to close that gap, by working with organizations advancing equity in child health, immigrant health, behavioral health, Medicaid, education, family wellbeing, and social policy.
We are especially well-suited for organizations asking:
Why is this evidence not moving decision-makers?
Why is this program not being adopted or sustained?
Why are communities not engaging fully?
What story is blocking change?
What narrative would make action possible?
We help organizations translate lived experience into clear, credible, and actionable narratives that shape decisions, strengthen trust, and move systems toward change.
How We Partner
We work with funders, advocacy organizations, coalitions, researchers, and public institutions seeking to increase the impact of their work.
Our core services include:
Policy & Advocacy Narrative Strategy
We help organizations identify the narratives that influence public will, policymaker attention, and legislative action. This may include narrative landscape analysis, policy message architecture, messenger strategy, testimony preparation, story banks, and campaign-aligned narrative guidance.Narrative Strategy for Systems Change
We help institutions understand the trust, perception, and implementation barriers that determine whether programs are adopted, sustained, or scaled. This may include stakeholder narrative analysis, community trust assessments, implementation barrier mapping, and strategic recommendations for program adoption and sustainability.Strategic Writing & Public Voice
We support op-eds, testimony, public statements, media preparation, executive thought leadership, and other high-impact communications that connect evidence to lived reality without compromising rigor or credibility.
Get Started
Working with Narrative Justice Partners begins with a focused strategy conversation.
We will clarify your goals, audience, timeline, and desired impact, then identify the best way to translate your research, advocacy, program, or policy work into narratives that move decisions
Click the button below to Start the Conversation.
About Our Founder
The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation.
— Audre Lorde
Dr. Omolara Thomas is a pediatrician, health-equity strategist, researcher, and systems builder whose work sits at the intersection of child health, narrative, policy, and institutional change.
She founded Narrative Justice Partners to help organizations translate lived experience into the kind of strategic insight that moves decisions, strengthens trust, and drives systems change.
Dr. Thomas brings more than two decades of experience working across clinical care, public health, research, philanthropy, advocacy, and community-based systems. In 2020, she left academic medicine to co-found Strong Children Wellness, an award-winning social enterprise delivering integrated primary care, mental health, and social supports to under-resourced children and families.
Through that work, she has helped design and scale care models for Medicaid-eligible, uninsured, immigrant, and historically underserved families, many facing the compounded effects of poverty, trauma, immigration stress, and systemic exclusion. Strong Children Wellness has partnered with community-based organizations, foundations, and public systems to make trusted, whole-child care more accessible to families too often left out of traditional health care models.
That frontline experience shapes the core insight behind Narrative Justice Partners: data alone does not change systems. Institutions also need to understand the narratives, trust conditions, and lived realities that determine whether policies are adopted, programs are sustained, and communities engage.
Dr. Thomas has appeared in and contributed analysis to national platforms including NPR, Newsweek, Reuters, SXSW, SiriusXM, Essence, and others. She has partnered with foundations, advocacy organizations, health institutions, and public-interest leaders to translate complex evidence into clear, credible, human-centered narratives that influence policy, funding, and public understanding.
She earned her MD from New York University School of Medicine, completed pediatric residency at Boston Children’s Hospital and Boston Medical Center, and holds an MPH from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. She is fellowship-trained in health services research and was selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Fellow. Her research has appeared in more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, including Pediatrics, PLOS One, BMJ Global Health, BMC Public Health, and Academic Pediatrics.
Practical, rigorous, and grounded in community reality, Dr. Thomas helps organizations see what the data alone cannot show: why change stalls, what narratives shape decision-making, and how lived experience can become strategy for lasting impact.
She is based in New York.
Contact Us
Tell us briefly about your project, goals, timeline, and the decision-makers or audiences you need to move. We’ll review your request and follow up to explore whether Narrative Justice Partners is the right strategic partner for your work.