From Empathy to Action: Strengthening Provider Communication for Healthy Breastfeeding Outcomes
Overview
reimagine collective partnered with Alameda County WIC to design and facilitate a regional invitational training for over 100 participants focused on prenatal education and healthy breastfeeding outcomes. The training centered on strengthening the interpersonal communication skills of WIC staff and community partners so they could better support families across diverse cultural and social contexts.
Our session combined empathy mapping, values-based messaging, and tailored scenario work to help providers understand the real-life challenges of parents navigating breastfeeding. Participants left with practical frameworks, culturally responsive messaging tools, and greater confidence in engaging families with clarity, compassion, and respect.
Our Approach
reimagine collective began with pre-facilitation planning in close collaboration with WIC program leads, ensuring that the training was directly tailored to staff needs and challenges. This included in depth conversations with staff, identification of key communication gaps, and the co design of agenda priorities.
The session itself was highly interactive, blending lecturettes, scenario based exercises, and facilitated group work:
Empathy mapping activities helped participants understand parents’ thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and needs in a range of complex circumstances (from bereavement to peer pressure to cultural norms).
Values based messaging exercises guided groups through the VPSA framework (Values → Problem → Solution → Action) to create supportive, clear, and culturally resonant messages.
Parent profiles were custom designed to reflect real world complexity, including grief, distrust in health systems, stigma, and family influence, ensuring the practice felt authentic and grounded.
The methods emphasized deep listening, trauma informed practice, and sensitivity to cultural nuance. Every element of the training, from facilitator toolkits to audience profiles, was designed to make communication strategies both rigorous and immediately usable.
Impact
The training delivered three key outcomes for Alameda County WIC:
Capacity Building
Participants gained hands-on practice in empathy mapping, giving them tools to better understand clients’ lived experiences and communicate with authenticity.Strategic Messaging
Providers developed values-based messages that can be adapted across a range of real-life scenarios, offering clarity and care in conversations about sensitive or complex decisions like infant feeding.Long-Term Application
Staff left with a toolkit of empathy maps, VPSA message drafts, and post-session resources that reinforced learning and ensured continuity in their daily practice.
Participant feedback highlighted that the training felt practical, culturally responsive, and directly applicable to their work. Many noted that the empathy mapping process provided new insights into how to build trust with families facing grief, stigma, or systemic barriers.
PARTNER
Alameda County WIC
TEAM
AJ Titong
SERVICES
Meeting Facilitation
Values-Based Messaging Training
Audience Mapping Training
