-: Hi everyone and welcome to our one and only lecture
in module three.
Today is a recap of chapter three,
Getting the Facts: Effective Application of Data
and Research.
This would be our second step in developing
an advocacy plan.
We've already defined our problem
now we are gathering facts.
Just to highlight again,
public health advocacy should truly be reviewed
as both an art and a science.
We are one half science,
we are defining a clear problem
and supporting that with facts from research,
evidence and data.
But it's also an art, and we are going to go over that
in the second half of this course
because it's also an art form of communication
and how we can develop a plan to persuade and change minds,
garner support and create a campaign that can be followed
through until the change we intend to happen happens.
A great way to view public health advocacy
and to be honest, any public health initiative in general
is systems thinking.
This week you do have a required reading
about systems thinking but a quick recap of what that is,
it's a really great way of viewing the web of relationships
that happen with anything.
So it shows the relationships and connectivity of a system
rather than just one moving organism.
And this is a really common approach in public health
because there's often so many moving parts
given that it is a multidisciplinary field
and really relevant to public health advocacy.
In previous modules we talked about defining the problem
and how difficult this can be
because there's so many contributing factors
to a negative health outcome.
When you approach public health advocacy
and developing a campaign,
it is very important to keep systems syncing
in the back of your mind to develop a campaign
that is reflective and understanding
of the many relationships in our society,
in our societal constructs
and how you can really make a campaign that translates
into the real world to truly make the differences
that you are intending to create.
And without defining the problem with data and facts
we wouldn't have a public health campaign.
And we must consider that data collection, fact collection
and presenting data and facts are really the backbone
of what we're doing in public health, science
and any health related fields.
We really need to support our claims with evidence
in order to fix the disparities we are identifying.
And this is really important
because we could be fixing the wrong thing,
or perhaps we could make matters worse
by not identifying a true cause
or establishing an association where there is no causation
for that association.
And if you are currently in a healthcare science
or public health field, you are probably well versed
in the millions of pieces of data that are available
on a variety of factors.
And one really important part of advocacy and campaigning
is keeping all of that organized.
A lot of times you are going to be presenting
your information to a group of stakeholders,
a coalition, decision makers, politicians,
and it's important to keep that all in what our text calls,
the fact file.
This can include primary literature,
as well as other forms of data such as
testimonies and interviews, online media reports,
documentaries are a really great source,
data from agencies or think tanks
or private foundations, as well as public records
and public search domains.
Oftentimes we overlook these five different sources
of literature because it's not primary literatures
but it's always important to remember that gray literature
and non-primary literature are important sources
of information especially when we are creating
a public health campaign that is affecting real lives
and communities.
When we present the facts that we collect
from a variety of sources,
there's a few ways we can do that but it's always important
on the bottom line to share relevant success stories
or similar policies or interventions similar to what
we are trying to create in our campaign.
Additionally, we have to be cognizant of the audience
we are presenting the facts to.
For example, we wouldn't provide a doctoral thesis
to a community where the literacy levels are low
or they are a standard literacy level of 8th grade.
Rather we need to be cognizant of taking this complex
information and data and presenting it in a way
that everyone can understand or attain.
Some ways in which we can present the facts include
fact sheets, decks, policy briefs, quick videos
or even white papers, short white papers to be clear.
I will highlight that this is an important part
of our assignment this week and synopsis
and examples of fact sheets, decks, policy briefs
and quick videos are all available on Brightspace.
It is possible that you identify a problem in a community
that you want to fix with advocacy or campaign work
but you do not have the data to support
and justify a full campaign.
This is when you conduct barefoot epidemiology.
This is when you are going out to the community
to collect your own data and that can be through survey use,
cell phone, so with consent, photographs of the problem
or videos of the problem,
testimonies from community members.
And when there is no research
you just have to be mindful that the first part
of your campaign may be just collecting data
and not working towards systemic change and that's okay.
However, I will highlight that when you are doing
barefoot epidemiology, be mindful of everyone
in the community.
Not everyone has access to online surveys,
not everyone has cell phones for you to call.
And to be really considerate and understand the disparities
in a community to make sure you capture the entire problem
and how it affects everyone in a population
not just individuals who have access to the tools
you are using to conduct your barefoot epidemiology
data collection.
In addition, be creative, create your own surveys.
Contact agencies to see if you can get an FOIA request
to access their data.
You don't necessarily always have to reinvent the wheel
but be creative.
Try to find ways in which you can use existing literature
or similar campaigns to support and justify
your intervention in a community.
And we also need to know that data can only go so far.
We also have to have a humanistic approach
to public health advocacy and connect the dots
between what we want to do and what the data says.
And that is a hard task to do.
There's so much data out there that oftentimes
in the text highlights,
why isn't every paper leading to advocacy change?
And that's because connecting advocacy
and connecting what we see in research and trials
and literature reviews is a difficult task to follow.
And oftentimes it can feel that you're not in your element
or researchers don't feel comfortable connecting those dots.
So don't be afraid to do your research and start collecting
and drawing the dots together
and providing that to your audience to garner support
and work towards change.
The last aspect of chapter three the required reading
and the text that I wanted to highlight
was Snyder's commentary on a story arc.
He highlighted that within your information file
that you are presenting to your audience,
it's also important to collect testimonies in interviews
from people related to your cause.
This is through what he called a story arc
which maps out your stories
and aligns with different social determinants of health
and the data you collect.
It really is the highlight of the meat of your campaign.
It will identify what the problem is,
who is impacted by the problem
and why you're doing what you're doing.
This is a great media aspect as well to garner support
and as always within your story arc,
always make sure you define your problem first
and then work on the rest.
We must have clearly define our problem
in order to garner support for moving towards solutions.
Again, this lecture is just a recap of the text
and solely adopted from chapter three in Snyder and Iton's
Advocacy for Public Health Policy Change:
an Urgent Imperative.
Thank you so much.