-: Hi everyone, and welcome back to another module
and lecture here in Public Health Advocacy.
Today we are doing a quick recap
of highlights from our required reading
in the course text on Chapter 6 today.
So Legislative Change in Making Law.
I felt that this chapter was a really great reminder
of how closely public health advocates
work with the legislative field
and decision makers in politics.
So in public health advocacy,
we are looking to identify a problem
and create a positive solution for the audience
or community we are intending to help change.
And this can be done through many different ways,
including disease prevention and health promotion
through policy change, inceptions of new policies,
amending laws, and acts, and bills,
as well as creating new bills and laws
to protect the lives of the populations we want to serve.
A lot of times, that comes with working with politicians,
and decision makers, and legislators,
and often it can form a symbiotic relationship.
In advocacy work, it's often necessary
and feels almost as if you are trying to persuade Congress,
or boards, or legislators to support passing your law
and supporting your campaign.
And the way to do that is with facts, data,
and collect enough testimonies and opinions from communities
and partners that want to get involved with your campaign.
And while it is true that working in public health advocacy,
you have to reach out to legislators,
there are public health professionals within government.
Public health is a really diversified field,
and you can find public health allied professionals
and public health professionals
in almost any sector of our society, including government.
If you are interested in that intersection
of legislator and public health advocacy,
some potential roles and jobs to pursue could include
research for government agencies and supporting
and sharing data and relevant information to communities,
working in the public service sector,
including the Department of Health.
You could work in environmental health,
community health, and even the medical field.
One key takeaway from the chapter
was there's a very strong difference
between legislative advocacy and lobbying.
While lobbying is a part of legislative advocacy,
it is not the same.
So we can view legislative advocacy as evidence
or research-driven education
that can include ethnography testimonies
and awareness to politicians, decision makers,
and legislative teams that allow for support to be garnered
for our certain cause or campaign.
Legislative advocacy really is an art form.
You're trying to frame issues in a way
that provides a proposal of solutions,
and garner support to better the public
through legislative changes and supporting bills,
laws, and acts.
Whereas lobbying is a little bit different.
It's absolutely a part of legislative advocacy,
but it's not the entire thing.
We can view lobbying, and this is from the text,
as an interjection in legislative process
for an intended cause.
So that can include changes, amendments,
rejections, blocking.
It often uses supports such as media and data collection
to build support for the influence on the process
and what their intended goal is.
As I had mentioned before,
oftentimes in public health campaigns,
you're going to feel a symbiotic relationship
with a politician or a legislator
who's going to help carry your plan
to that ultimate goal of systemic and long-term change.
I made a quick graphic that was really representative
of what is in the text.
So you're here on the left,
you're the public health advocacy professional.
You're gonna work to develop a campaign,
make a pitch packet and gathering of facts,
and do some research on who is the best person
to carry your campaign to systemic change.
Oftentimes, you are not gonna meet
with that legislator yourself,
but you're gonna originally work with the staff support.
There, you're going to work on collaborating
and drafting bills, and there's so many different
working parts to really carry that dream
and get the support of a politician,
and staff and funding to make systemic change.
And from there, once you have all of that together,
you have your campaign, you're working,
collaborating, you're drafting bills,
then you can move forward to fulfilling your campaign goals.
So absolutely two different worlds.
You have your public health advocate,
you have your politician, and together,
that is how we make change,
especially in terms of policy change.
Which seems very simple in terms of that graphic,
but there's many different moving parts
that are outlined a little bit more in detail in the book,
but I wanted to highlight that working with this Dream Team,
you're also going to be looking at
continued data collection, polling,
getting the communities understanding and feelings,
as that is who's voting this in,
that is who's making the choices,
and ultimately also living under these new policy changes,
reform, or laws.
We'll need to continue building support,
garnering support and testimonies,
as well as connecting with lawyers, lawmakers,
and also connecting to the community
through media present and public health communications.
Both of these are the highlight of Module 4,
where we talk a lot more about public health communication
and why that is important to advocacy work.
Lastly, I just wanna highlight what budget advocacy is.
This is another part of public health advocacy
that oftentimes, in my opinion,
does not get the credit that it deserves.
It's the backbone to many campaigns.
We oftentimes don't wanna think about dollar signs
when we wanna make change,
but that is ultimately a necessary evil.
We have to consider where we are getting our funding,
how we can persuade individuals
or the government to provide us tax dollars
to support our cause and make changes,
and ultimately get into an annual budget to have money
and to put it towards the cause
that you're trying to pursue.
This is not very easy, and if you are interested
in budget advocacy, it is a very, very intricate field,
and you can learn a little bit more about it
in box 6-16 in the course text.
Here is the references, again,
this is Chapter 6 in our Snyder and Iton
"Advocacy for Public Health Policy: An Urgent Imperative".
I will see you in the next lecture.