The latest Colorado Health Foundation Pulse Poll tells a stark story.
People are worried. They are uncertain about the future. And they are not convinced that the systems meant to support them are keeping up with the realities of daily life.
While the data are Colorado specific, the patterns are not.
National polling and research, from sources like Ipsos and Pew, show the same underlying dynamics playing out across the United States. Cost pressures are dominating attention. Housing feels increasingly out of reach. At the same time, rapidly changing immigration policies and enforcement actions are introducing new layers of fear and uncertainty, contributing to stress and mental strain across many communities.
Taken together, the data suggest that this is not just a moment of political disagreement or shifting priorities. It is a moment of widespread strain rooted in lived experience. And that has big implications for how organizations frame issues, communicate solutions, and engage the people they serve.
The Economy Is Personal
In the Pulse survey, cost-of-living and affordability concerns quickly rise to the surface. National data reinforce this pattern.
Pew Research has found that economic concerns today are less about macro indicators and more about whether people feel financially secure in their daily lives.
This distinction matters.
When institutions talk about the economy using technical language – inflation rates, labor participation, market trends – they often miss what people are actually experiencing. For most people, the economy is not a set of indicators. It is the stress of rent increases. The anxiety of grocery bills. The feeling that working harder does not necessarily lead to progress or even stability.
Communications that focus on economics can feel disconnected or even dismissive when they do not reflect that emotional reality. People are not looking to be told that conditions are improving on paper. They want acknowledgment of how hard it feels to get by right now, and they want to understand how systems, policies, or programs might ease that pressure in real and tangible ways.
For organizations, this means framing matters as much as facts. Effective communication starts by acknowledging lived experience, then connecting solutions to relief, stability, and a greater sense of control over everyday life.
Everything Starts with Housing
Housing affordability and housing insecurity show up repeatedly in both Colorado and national data. But their significance goes beyond housing alone.
Housing is one of the clearest signals of whether systems are working for people. When housing is unstable, everything else becomes harder. Health suffers when people must move frequently or live in overcrowded conditions. Mental strain increases when people do not know if they will be able to stay in their homes. Education is disrupted when children move from school to school. Productivity declines when workers commute long distances or constantly manage financial stress.
Research from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and national homelessness data from the National Alliance to End Homelessness show that housing instability is rising and affordability is a growing concern for households across income levels.
For organizations working in health, behavioral health, education, workforce development, immigration, or environmental issues, housing insecurity offers an important reminder. People experience challenges as interconnected. When communications assume stability, time, trust, or bandwidth, they can miss the reality that many people are navigating.
When messages are organized around programs, they often assume people have time, trust, and capacity to navigate complexity. Framing issues around stability instead starts with what people are trying to protect in their daily lives, making communications feel more relevant and human. It also shifts the burden from asking individuals to navigate complexity to showing how systems can reduce pressure and support resilience.
Stress Is Widespread
Behavioral and mental health concerns appear throughout the Pulse data, sometimes directly and often indirectly. People may not always name mental health as their top issue, but stress, anxiety, and exhaustion are woven into how they talk about cost, housing, safety, and the future.
National data from the National Institute of Mental Health show that mental health conditions are common and that many people do not receive care for them. But just as important is how people understand their own distress. For many, it does not feel like a diagnosis. It feels like being overwhelmed, stretched too thin, or constantly bracing for what might come next.
When mental health is framed only through clinical language or crisis response, it can feel distant or irrelevant to people who are struggling but do not see themselves as needing treatment. At the same time, people are increasingly aware that stress is not just personal. It is shaped by external conditions like housing instability, job insecurity, discrimination, and environmental threats.
Communications that name stress as a reasonable response to relatable conditions are more likely to resonate. They reduce stigma and invite engagement by reflecting reality rather than labeling it.
Experiences Color Policy Views
One of the clearest signals across the data is this: While political language often dominates public conversation, the concerns people express are grounded in material conditions and daily life.
People feel pressure. They feel uncertain. They worry about maintaining stability for themselves and their families. These experiences cut across geography, ideology, and identity.
When communications fail to reflect this shared reality, people disengage, not because they do not care, but because they feel unseen. When messages acknowledge interconnected pressures and speak to universal needs like dignity, stability, and hope, they create space for trust.
What This Moment Requires
The Pulse survey and national data together point to the same recommendations:
- Start with what people are feeling before explaining what systems are doing.
- Connect issues that are too often treated separately.
- Recognize that building trust starts with empathy.
At their core, these are not communications tactics. They are responses to a deeper need people are expressing right now: the need for a sense of footing in a world that feels increasingly unstable.
As David Brooks recently wrote in The New York Times,
“…all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base. People need a secure base. Part of that base is emotional — unconditional attachments to family and friends. Part of that secure base is material — living in a safe community, with a measure of financial stability. Part of that secure base is spiritual — living within a shared moral order, possessing faith that hard work will be rewarded, faith in a brighter future.”
That idea helps make sense of what the data are showing. When housing feels out of reach, when costs keep rising, when policies shift quickly and unpredictably, that secure base starts to erode. And when it does, people experience issues not as isolated challenges, but as a constant state of pressure.
If we want our work to matter in this moment, our communications must reflect the reality people are navigating every day. Not the world as it looks on paper, but the world as it feels to live in.
That is where trust begins. And in a moment like this, trust is the foundation for everything else.
