C H A L L E N G E

Public Health in Crisis

As society experiences the delicate balances and global scale of collective health, politicians and popular movements across the country and around the world have found success in appealing to individualism and personal preferences in the face of uncertainty. In some cases, even at the expense of collective responsibility and wellbeing.

The public health system faces years of chronic underfunding, coinciding with mounting scrutiny from policy makers, the press, and individuals — all grappling with their own uncertainties. We are approaching a breaking point between the system and “the public” (i.e. all of us).

What happens to our society if we can’t work together to keep people healthy?

In order to address a damaged relationship between the system and those it serves, we examined the “social contract” on which public health is premised, where people work together for shared good, and we identified trust as a fundamental concept to reconsider in forming a path to a restored sense of good will and mutuality between Public Health and the public it serves.

O P P O R T U N I T Y

Reframing Trust for Public Health

We examined trust through a divergent and convergent cultural and theoretical audit process. Through these lenses, we explored the interaction of human needs and motivations, with the behaviors, promises, and actions of major brands and public institutions.

O U T C O M E

Understanding Trust as an Investment

Like currency, the value of trust fluctuates based on measurable components, subjecting it to the possibility of inflation and deflation of value, as well as other risks that currency faces, such as counterfeiting.

T R U S T A S C U R R E N C Y

Measurable Components

Trust can be broken into four key components, based on an organization’s or individual’s ability to fulfill functional and emotional promises.

T R U S T A S A C U R R E N C Y

Components of Trust as Investment Opportunities

An original study indicated that both high capability in a given area of trust and a balance of capabilities across components can yield a general sense of trust.

Brands and organizations can build trust based on existing competencies and can prioritize new actions and investments accordingly.

T R U S T A S A C U R R E N C Y

Inflation and Deflation

Investments into emotional versus functional components of trust have greater and lesser opportunity and impact, depending on the conditions and mood of system or market participants.

Trust becomes a more expensive, higher-effort investment as conditions become more uncertain. The value of trust, as well as the value of its component parts, are heavily affected by external conditions.

T R U S T A S A C U R R E N C Y

Misinformation as Counterfeit Currency

Times of accelerating uncertainty create opportunity for the circulation of **counterfeit trust**. In these moments, less-than-reliable-information, unverified opinion, and even outright misinformation can offer a sense of stability. Especially when competing with the reporting of alarming facts, sometimes obligated to contradict itself as the situation changes.

Markets saturated with counterfeit currency can eventually reach a tipping point, where the value of both the counterfeit and the genuine currency becomes significantly depressed. Similarly, when discourse is saturated with misinformation, the value of all information is diminished, along with the trust that information can build.

...increasing the sense of control, perception of transparency, and self-affirmation can decrease the strength of conspiracy beliefs.”

T R U S T A S A C U R R E N C Y

High Value Trust:
Interventions for Choice

To create stability and lower uncertainty on an individual level, brands and organizations can identify moments of intervention to give participants choices.

By providing easy-to-understand, actionable information at key points of intervention (e.g. financial transactions and personalized communications). Increasing a sense of personal control minimizes distrust, as well as introducing a more robust version of trust that’s harder to counterfeit.