Join us on Wednesday, December 3rd, as the AVA Webinar Series presents ”If No One Tells the Story, Nothing Will Ever Change”: Creating and Sharing Stories about Adolescent and Young Adult Health, featuring Dr. Mike Lang, Teddy Kyomuhangi, and Robens Mutatina from Common Language Digital Storytelling.
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025
12 – 1:30pm MST
In this presentation, Dr. Mike Lang, Teddy Kyomuhangi, & Robens Mutatina, will share about utilizing Digital Storytelling (DST) to support Adolescent and Young Adult Health in South Western Uganda. Mike will provide a brief overview of the DST before sharing the short documentary film “A Shared Dream: Digital Storytelling to Support Gender Equality in East Africa” that will illustrate the process and product. Following this Teddy & Robens will give practical examples of how DST has been utilized to support the Healthy Adolescents and Young People (HAY!) program and share one example of a GBV digital story that has stimulated significant change in the HAY! program engagements. Throughout these examples the ethical issues of DST with vulnerable populations will be addressed with overarching principles and specific actions provided to minimize the potential for harm to both the storyteller and the audience when sharing these challenging stories. Attendees will leave with both a deeper understanding of the ethical issues that can arise when sharing stories about adolescent and young adult health, and the importance of creating and sharing these difficult stories.
About the Speakers
Dr. Mike Lang is a health researcher, award winning filmmaker, Digital Storytelling facilitator and adjunct assistant professor in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary, Canada. He has directed and produced three feature-length documentaries, three short documentaries, and three web series about the human health experience in addition to numerous health education curricula. Mike has also published 25 academic articles and facilitated the creation of over 1000 digital stories (short-films) with a diverse cross-section of patients, family caregivers, and health care professionals around the world. His professional and research focus is on using digital storytelling and documentary filmmaking in education, advocacy, research, and a therapeutic capacity within healthcare and wellness contexts. Connect with him on all socials @mikelangstories or via www.mikelangstories.com or commonlanguagedst.org.
Teddy Kyomuhangi has a social science background and a Master’s of Public Health Leadership with a focus in saving mothers and children. Teddy has worked for almost 20 years in managing and coordinating community empowerment and capacity building projects through community health workers (CHWs). She is the Senior Program Manager for Healthy Child Uganda. Teddy has vast experience in project planning, implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and knowledge translation. Teddy has expertise in building and engaging research teams. Teddy has contributed to several studies including motivation of CHWs, Obuntu and how this influences the selection and motivation of CHWs, retention of CHWs, and understanding if and how community programs have reached vulnerable populations especially rural women in southwestern Uganda. Teddy is also a graduate of a week-long DST course in Canada in 2019 and has since worked with MUST team to create a regional hub for DST. Teddy was a research coordinator and team member of the IMCHA study. She has lead the planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of HAY! Initiative. She is the primary author of the “maximizing engagement for readiness and impact (MERI) model which documents the experiences, processes and strategies of HCU for the last 20 years. Teddy attended implementation sciences training, has applied this knowledge during HAY implementation and continues to mentor the district implementing partners using the same lens.
Robens Mutatina is a Public Health Officer and a skilled Digital Storytelling Facilitator. He holds a MSc. in Health Information Technology and a BSc. in Public Health. He currently serves as a Project Coordinator for the Digital Storytelling for Global Health research and action project at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), Uganda. He has for the past seven years participated in several implementation and research projects focused on maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health in Southwestern Uganda. Robens has directly facilitated the creation of over 100 Digital Stories that have been used in various Local, National, and International health promotion and research initiatives. Connect with him via email: robens.hcu@gmail.com