On July 4th, the day that celebrates the birth of our country, which was founded on the principle that everyone is created equal, I read two very different narratives that were united by a common concern: the delivery of healthcare to those in underserved parts of the world. One was “Where Words Fails,” a non-fiction essay by Avina Rami, then a medical student at Harvard. It appeared in the Spring 2025 edition of Intima. The second, titled “The Cruel Attack on USAID,” was an essay in the February 11th, 2025 issue of The Atlantic by contributing writer, Peter Wehner.

In Rami’s story, she tells about working in a clinic in the remote Guatemalan Highlands where “each day has carried something new—moments of wonder, of uncertainty, of quiet lessons tucked between visits with patients,” whom she considers it “a privilege to care for.” In language as lush as her story’s tropical setting, Rami describes her encounter with a young Mayan mother whose child is sick with high fever. When the doctor hands the parent a prescription, the young mother says, “No sé como leer,” meaning she doesn’t know how to read. In a touching display of empathy and understanding, Rami, instead of using written instructions, draws a sun for the morning dose, a moon for the evening, then demonstrates how much medicine she should give, by marking a small plastic cup with a Sharpie. Rami goes on to explain that “being an effective physician isn’t just about mastering terminology; it’s about listening beyond words, seeing beyond what is written, and meeting patients where they are.”

In his essay, Peter Wehner writes persuasively, using data and facts, about our government’s pointed attack on the U.S Agency for International Development. He relates that, as this country’s main provider of humanitarian assistance, USAID promotes global health and fights epidemics and starvation. He makes his case by pointing out hospitals built in Syria, land mines removed in Cambodia, an Ebola outbreak contained in the Congo, and the three million lives saved annually by immunizations. “People who have worked in international development for decades will tell you that there is not a single area of development and humanitarian assistance USAID has not been involved in,” he writes. But then, Wehner laments that by dismantling the agency, humanitarian efforts like the funding for treatment of babies born in Uganda with HIV and the efforts to control Malaria, which kills more than half a million people a year, have been eliminated. He writes that “the Department of Government Efficiency has, with a “stroke of a pen,” put eight million people at risk of dying of starvation.

Fundamental to both Rami’s story and Peter Wehner’s essay is that dictum of the Declaration of Independence declaring all humans are equal and—no matter who they are or where they live—they are entitled to compassionate healthcare.

So how can people in our country be convinced it is right to share our bounty with the world’s less fortunate? While well-researched and thoughtful articles like Wehner’s are important, I believe the best hope of persuading people to support humanitarian efforts is to harness the power of stories like Rami’s and all the others whose work appears in publications like Intima. While data and facts can make an argument, it has been shown that stories, by revealing the inner lives of characters and presenting ideas from different points of view, are the most effective way to change core beliefs.

The challenge, then, is to expose more people to the narrative medicine experience and get them to read stories, stories like “Where Words Fails,” that capture the heart and have the power to impact humanity.