-: Hi everyone, and welcome to our very first module
and lecture in public health advocacy.
Today is all about setting the groundwork
for what public health advocacy is and introducing it
as not only a specialty within public health
but also the framework that you'll need to go forward
and make campaigns for what you're passionate about
and make the changes you will want to see
in your communities.
Before we dive into lecture material, I just wanted to go
over four distinct learning objectives for this lecture.
By the end of this lecture, you'll be able to
define key terms in public health advocacy.
You'll be able to analyze
the Iton-Witt Health Equity Framework.
You'll be able to identify the role of advocacy
in both modern-day public health and public health history.
And lastly, you'll be able to define the four steps
to effective advocacy work for policy change.
So let's dive in.
Three really important key terms that will be helpful
not only in the field of public health
but in this course in public health advocacy.
I wanted to quickly take a moment
to define three definitions.
The first is, what do I mean by health policy?
What is it meant by policy change
and what is meant by policy advocacy?
In our book there in our textbook
there was some really great definitions
so I'm going to just provide the textbook definition
and then some examples to better place the words
on the page to real life.
So what is health policy?
Put very simply these are rules
that are governing health issues.
They are policies that are put out to have a specific
end goal for positive health outcomes.
An example of this would be Central Vermont
Medical Center's Tobacco Policy outlining the parameters
for tobacco use on their campus.
As we all know in public health there is a lot of research
and data surrounding tobacco use
and how it has negative health outcomes.
It is important to mention that health policy
can be implemented at both a local and state level.
Next, what do I mean by policy change?
The textbook calls this a shift in the rules
that allows new ways of doing things.
This can mean that there are new avenues
or reform that allows for something such as
the Affordable Care Act to be more accessible
or perhaps on the other spectrum for things
to become less accessible.
An example of policy change would be a really
interesting article that shows the United States
Firearm Policies for the last two years.
I have included the link here for any curious minds.
Lastly, what is policy advocacy?
This is something that if you are passionate
about public health advocacy currently
and pursue want to pursue after school
this is where you'll lie.
And this is policy advocacy
as a way to change health policy
as well as how we are allocating our resources
on a government or private institution or agency level.
A really great example of policy advocacy
is the Black Lives Matter movement
and all of the policy reform that has come
from this advocacy group.
And just like the overarching theme of public health,
the definitions are not always so cut and dry
as we know a great definition for public health
put simply is promoting health and preventing disease.
There is also many different working definitions
for public health advocacy.
Our textbook goes over John Hopkins definition
of Public health advocacy
and I personally think this is a really strong example
of why what we do in advocacy work is so important.
So I will read this for you.
Again, this can also be found in the text.
So public health advocacy is to influence policy
and practices in ways that benefit people's health
and wellbeing and the societies in which they live.
Advocates within government, civil society,
and academia use evidence and other rationales
to improve the social good by,
one, encouraging positive changes to law
and to government and service policies,
improving access to scientific data and evidence,
increasing financial support for interventions
to promote health
and altering or shifting public attitudes and behavior.
In this course, we are really going to be working
on how to address all four of these
through the use of developing a campaign
in effectively communicating our message
and the data we collect on our area of interest.
The authors of our texts also provide another definition
and that is what advocacy is.
They are citing Cohen et al and saying
advocacy is the pursuit of influencing outcomes
that directly affect people's life.
This really ties into what health equity is
and what health inequity is.
So what is health equity?
You may have heard this in other public health classes
or perhaps this is your first time
in a public health course.
Public health equity or health equity in general is the goal
of what we do in public health, and that is to ensure
that everyone has an opportunity to have the best possible
health outcomes they can have
and that is accounting for any disparities
or inequities they may face to get there.
This is very different from equality
where we are providing everybody
with the same intervention
regardless of any disparities or obstacles they may come.
A really great example is right here,
The Media Care Blog post.
This shows equity is very different from equality
and should not be used interchangeably.
Here on the left, we have equality.
Everyone is given the same box
despite the fact that two of the people still cannot see.
Whereas in health equity initiatives,
we take in consideration that there are people who are
smaller who can't see the fence,
and perhaps somebody who already can see the fence may not
need as much support or as much consideration
as the two others to see.
On the flip side, health inequity
this is where there is not a fair and just opportunity
for individuals to have the best positive health outcomes
without consideration to any disparities they may face
to get there.
We must remember that our feelings of wanting
to make a change where we see inequities
and disparities is not new to the 21st century.
And there's some examples of historical advocacy work
include 13th century, the protests leading
to the Magna Carta and the development of rights
that were more fair and just than what was happening prior.
We also see in the text they mentioned Dr. Virchow,
who was identifying and advocating that social conditions
did influence health.
Again, we see Dr. Snow, John Snow as a pillar of advocacy
work in the cholera epidemic in London,
and advocating for you know, a change in shift in beliefs
to understand that cholera is not always spread by air
but rather by a water source.
Moving closer to the 21st century
we have the Women's Suffrage Movement,
advocacy and activist work that led to women's right to vote
changing millions of lives
and continuing to change millions of lives.
The March on Washington 1963,
to me one of the biggest advocacy movements
on the history of all history.
We have the occupation of Alcatraz
which continues to be a fueling fire for indigenous activism
and advocacy groups.
We have the 2022 Black Lives Matter Movement.
This is still an ongoing movement working to dismantle
systemic racism and to address inequalities
for black individuals throughout the United States
in addition to changing policies
in regards to police brutality.
Lastly, I wanted to highlight the current
Women's Rights 2022 Movement in terms of
reproductive autonomy and addressing any bills
and legislator out there that are working to dismantle
autonomy for women.
I'm also going to extend this to the current
Iranian Women's Right Movement that is going on,
and we will talk about this a lot in this class
as I am currently developing this class
alongside following the Iranian movement for women's rights.
So you are going to see this slide a lot
in this course because this is the foundation
of what this course is all about.
We are going through the steps for effective advocacy work.
The four steps that the book highlights
and I agree are to first define the problem
and make your plan.
The next is to gather facts.
The third is to build support.
And lastly, we're going to communicate
in a clear and compelling story
of what is wrong and what should be done.
This is easier said than done.
As we will discuss in this class
each of these steps is very complex
and requires a lot of stakeholder meetings,
perspectives and attention to detail.
We are going to go over a lot of different types
of advocacy, but a few just to highlight include
self-advocacy, group advocacy, budget advocacy,
media advocacy, peer advocacy, citizen advocacy,
and professional advocacy.
We are going to be going over all of these throughout
the next semester.
And you may be asking yourself
does advocacy work really make a difference?
Will my passion for dismantling X barrier
or this inequality actually make a difference?
And that is absolutely true.
Without advocacy, we would not have seatbelt laws,
we would not have helmets, we would not have, you know
safety limits or speed limits
or even any policies you can think of
about promoting health and preventing disease.
And we don't always need a campaign to effectively advocate.
We can advocate every day for changes in our community
without an effective campaign
and we should really work to use our skills
and our platform to make the changes we want to see.
We are all, or primarily most of us are enrolled in school
and probably in public health
and we are working to make a difference.
But I want everyone to consider their unique backgrounds,
skills, interests, and what really drives you
as this is going to be a very powerful tool
in advocacy work.
And lastly, advocacy work is hugely
a multidisciplinary field.
It is so important to continue to network
and branch out to other different perspectives
in order to have a well-rounded advocacy campaign.
Lastly, we are going to quickly go
over the Iton-Witt health equity framework,
which is showing that upstream inequities
are causing downstream disparities.
We see that there is a both a community and medical side
to this.
We are going to be going over this in detail next module
as we will be doing an assignment that works to fill out
the Iton-Witt Health framework.
Just quickly going over it
we see that discriminatory narrative.
So you know, for example racism can lead to disparities
in institutional policies.
We know that through government, we see that
in private associations including home owning, redlining
et cetera, that can lead to social inequity.
So again, residential segregation, neighborhood conditions
and this all is in our community
and that can lead to medical downstream effects.
So this can lead to increased risk
of different negative health outcomes such as stress
or violence, or issues with food accessibility
and obesity, physical activity, which then can lead
to disease and injury,
ultimately leading to premature death.
When we develop advocacy campaigns
we want to address these arrows.
The arrows in which one is leading to the other
and having a domino effect.
We wanna be able to end it here,
so the rest of these negative health outcomes don't happen.
That's the goal of public health.
We want to prevent disease and promote health
and through advocacy work and effective campaigning
we can justify that there is a problem upstream
that is leading to downstream effects.
Lastly, here is our course text reference.
I will see you in the next lecture.