- community assessment
- policy strategy
- coalition building or broadening
- policy implementation
- policy evaluation
The APHA website offers resources to the consumer to aid them in developing successful political strategies. Although not specifically referred to as a toolkit, the Advocacy Section on their website includes the following tools to aid health professionals in this process:
Advocacy Activities:
"By sustaining a vocal and noticeable presence throughout the policy-making process, public health professionals can ensure that vital public health programs and services are protected and supported - both fiscally and politically." This site includes legislative updates, APHA and coalition letters sent to policy makers, APHA's Legislative Action Center, and links for finding your elected officials and the CDC Coalition. Consumers can also track the voting record of their Senators and Representatives at: MegaVote .
Advocacy Tips:
This link offers tools and resources to help public health professionals contact their legislators and advocate successfully. It includes the top ten rules of advocacy, Hill visit dos and don'ts, tips for calling on policy makers, writing them letters, a sample phone script to request funding, materials to provide, and tips for a public meeting.
Policy Statements:
"APHA influences policies and sets priorities on a broad set of issues, including children's health, access to care, environmental health, managed care, public health infrastructure, disease control, health disparities, bioterrorism, international health and tobacco control. APHA advocates for state and federal funding for health and professional education programs in public health."
Priorities:
This link focuses on their advocacy and policy work in the following public health priority areas: Rebuilding the Public Health Infrastructure, Ensuring Access to Health Care, and Eliminating Health Disparities.
This site offers a wealth of information and resources spanning a variety of public health issues.
Created by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)
This toolkit is designed for community members to become advocates for teen sexuality policy. The toolkit has eight sections, which provide basic background information and rationale for getting involved in discussion regarding teen sexuality policy/education.
The section on Working with Key Players offers tips for working effectively with community members, school boards, policy makers and the media. They also offer tips for public speaking. Finally, the section on Getting your Message Out includes tips for writing a letter to the editor, writing a press release, writing to your policymaker and conducting a community survey.
National Business Group on Health
(To locate this toolkit, use their search engine from their home page and type in the title.)
Investing in Maternal and Child Health: An Employer's Toolkit was generously funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau. All materials are in the public domain. Campbell KP, editor. Investing in Maternal and Child Health: An Employer's Toolkit. Washington, DC: Center for Prevention and Health Services, National Business Group on Health; 2007. For more information, contact healthservices@businessgrouphealth.org
This toolkit was developed by the National Business Group on Health and national experts in pediatrics and primary care to provide "employers with the information and tools they need to design and implement evidence-informed, comprehensive health benefits; effectively communicate benefit offerings to beneficiaries; educate beneficiaries on the importance of health promotion and disease prevention; and link these activities to organizational success" (1:15). Although designed specifically as an employer's toolkit, the information contained in this document may be applied to other MCH issues.
Chapter one builds the case for "family-friendly benefits. Chapter two details an MCH plan benefit model that "proposes a set of evidenced-informed, comprehensive, standardized, integrated and sustainable employer-sponsored health benefits for children and adolescents as well as preconception, pregnant and postpartum women" (2:16) and provides a cost analysis for employers. Chapter three offers a side-by-side analysis tool (3:13) that readers may find useful and provides additional data to support employers taking action in order to ensure beneficiaries are healthy before, during and after pregnancy. Chapter four addresses the importance of improving the health of children and how it will likely benefit the employer's bottom line. Chapter five offers several "how to" tools that can be applied to a variety of MCH issues including: "how to use health communication campaigns to change beneficiary behavior" (5:6), "how to evaluate the pros and cons of different communication methods" (5:8), "how to assist beneficiaries with limited health literacy" (5:9) and "how to assist beneficiaries with racial, ethnic or language barriers" (5:10). Chapter six offers health education materials for beneficiaries and chapter seven provides resources for employers.
(Changes to the website are anticipated in the coming months. Should you have difficulty accessing their website or specific information, please contact Mary L. Strode, M.S., S.T.A.K.E. Act Coordinator, California Department of Public Health, California Tobacco Control Program at mary.strode@cdph.ca.gov.)
The STORE Campaign was conceptualized by the Point-of-Sale Practices Workgroup convened by the California Department of Health Services, Tobacco Control Section (CDHS/TCS). In conjunction with national expert advisors, they created a campaign to address underage smoking and to stop the illegal sale of tobacco to California youth. The stages of the campaign were developed with the help of the Midwest Academy. The steps for developing an effective campaign are clearly laid out and may be adapted to other public health issues.
The process of building a campaign strategy begins with documenting a public health problem and assessing the political environment. In the first section, Document the Problem, this toolkit illustrates how needed data were collected and how they were used to document the problem. The various advantages and disadvantages of each data source are discussed. Particularly useful is the Key Points section that clearly details the specifics of each step in collecting local data.
Once the problem has been documented, the next step is to determine a course of action. The Select an Issue section outlines how to make a decision. Particularly useful is the goal setting exercise and the checklist for evaluating the issues. This section also includes a discussion of the benefits and barriers encountered when enacting policies. Again, the Key Points section offers detailed guidelines for determining a course of action.
The third section offers advice for Developing a Strategy. This toolkit uses the strategy chart developed by the Midwest Academy as a strategy map. The strategy chart details the overall design for building power and influencing others. This section outlines how to develop long range, intermediate and short term goals, determine available resources (organizational considerations) assess allies, constituents and opponents, identify decision makers (targets), and determine tactics. The Strategy Chart can be adapted to other MCAH issues, as well.
The section on Broadening Your Coalition offers 13 practical steps for building a healthy coalition, tips for developing a recruitment plan, guidelines for recruiting, and tips for sustaining your campaign committee.
The next step outlined in this toolkit is to Communicate with the Target or decision maker. This section identifies essential elements for communicating effectively with key decision makers (be prepared with talking points, fact sheets and additional presentation materials). The Key Points in this section offers succinct guidelines for this process.
The section on Implementing Activities explains the difference between lobbying and advocating (for example, educating elected officials, their staff, government employees, or the general public about your program or about tobacco-related issues is not lobbying), gives advice for communicating the campaign successfully, details crucial points for working effectively with the media, and provides tips for framing the issue. This section also offers direct action tactics, which use the power of organized people representing the community to confront the target official who has the power to approve the new policy. The Key Points offers bulleted points for implementing activities.
The final two sections offer tips for Evaluating Your Campaign at the state and local level and some Post-Campaign Tools.
The purpose of The Community Tool Box (CTB) is to help people bring about change and improvements resulting in healthier and more equitable communities. The Tool Box provides over 7,000 pages of practical information to support work in promoting community health and development. Their section on Influencing Policy Development is of particular interest. It includes a detailed outline for policy development, how-to information, concrete examples, and links to additional resources related to policy development.
The home page offers several useful links (and tabs) to guide the visitor in using the Tool Box efficiently and effectively. Learn More about Using the CTB provides the reader with a valuable quick start to the Tool Box where they can peruse the entire Table of Contents, find guidance for performing key tasks in the Do the Work section, find help with a problem in the Solve the Problem section, examine and explore best practices in the Using Promising Approaches section, and connect with others doing similar work from the Connect with Others section.
The Do the Work Section offers assistance with a variety of topics including, but not limited to, how to: create and maintain partnerships, assess community needs and resources, analyze problems and goals, develop plans and strategies, advocate for change, influence policy development, evaluate an initiative and write a grant application. Each section is broken down into five or six parts including: an outline of the subject matter, links to appropriate tools, "how to" information, examples, quick tips and links to additional resources.
The Solve the Problem section provides a troubleshooting guide that identifies common challenges in doing community work. The guide examines 13 types of common problems, asks reflective questions to help clarify the issue and provides links to appropriate sections in the Tool Box for further assistance and support.
The Use Promising Approaches section provides 12 Best Processes or activities that have been shown to promote community change and improvement, and links to databases of "best practices," or evidence-based approaches to addressing specific problems or goals.
The Connect with Others section provides the reader with the opportunity to Ask an Advisor for a brief, personalized response to questions about community work (for example, questions about planning, assessment, participation, leadership, advocacy, or evaluation). This section also offers links to a host of additional resources and groups related to community health and development.
By the Connecticut Health Policy Project
"The Connecticut Health Policy Project is a non-profit, non-partisan research and educational organization dedicated to improving access to affordable, quality health care for all Connecticut residents." The Health Advocacy Toolbox is a user-friendly toolkit that offers guidance in making changes in the policies that affect the lives and health of Connecticut residents.
The Toolbox is designed to help determine whether there ought to be a law or a different remedy for a problem and offers useful tips and tools for getting the job done. To determine whether or not an issue needs to be addressed, the Advocacy Decision Tree is helpful in pinpointing whether the issue is public or private and whether it should be addressed at the federal, state or local level. This section also offers some wonderful tips for navigating the legislative process and links for help in writing to policymakers, writing a fact sheet, as well as a host of other useful tools. For those who are more politically savvy, there is a "skip-ahead" page of Tools and Templates, as well.
For those in a time crunch, the section if you only have 5 minutes to make a difference offers a quick overview of advocacy efforts and includes links for contacting policy makers and guidance in finding the right advocacy group to join (coalitions and collaborations). It also provides links to several beneficial advocacy related articles.
This tool box is divided into sections, with many of them featuring links to related articles: finding and using data gives several useful tips for pulling together data needed to help bring on board policymakers who have different agendas; the Effective Communications section provides tips on determining the message, identifying the audience, framing the message, incorporating key data, and designing communication efforts; the Classic Advocacy Mistakes section and Tips No Advocate Should Ever Forget offer sage advise for effective lobbying; the Advocacy Presentations section provides examples of advocacy efforts; and finally the recommended reading section offers resources to aid in advocacy efforts and the links section provides helpful links to advocacy sites on the web.
Developed by the National Healthy Start Association (NHSA).
Permission granted by the NSHA, January 2008, for posting sections of "The Healthy Start Guide to Effective Community Involvement" to the CityMatCH website.
The Healthy Start Guide to Effective Community Involvement is a comprehensive tool for local Healthy Start programs that was designed to help them involve their communities in the plans and actions necessary to achieve healthy birth outcomes. The guide details why developing and maintaining community consortia is important, how to go about doing it, and the difficulties one might encounter throughout the process.
For additional information about this document or the National Healthy Start Association, please visit their website at: http://www.healthystartassoc.org or contact your local Healthy Start Association.
The following sections are of particular interest:
- Part Four: "Steps to Sustaining Community Consortia" (pages 13-14) features 12 Key Principles for sustaining consortia that help maintain the consistent and active participation and collaboration of consumers, community members and organizations. (These steps can ultimately lead to an evaluation of the process.)
- Part V: "Avoiding Pitfalls and Landmines: Challenges in Sustaining Community Involvement" (pages 15-16) offers five admonitions for working successfully with community leaders and contains key pieces (for example, unresolved racial and class difference) that can lead to failure.
- Part Six: "Evaluating Community Involvement Effectiveness" (pages 17-18) asks key questions that may be particularly helpful for local agencies wishing to determine the effectiveness of their community collaborations.
The ZERO TO THREE web site Public Policy section offers a wealth of information to carry out policy work. The Early Experiences Matter Policy Guide contains tools for creating policies that impact the lives of infants, toddlers, and their families, along with examples of best practices and links to federal and state funding streams. It is organized into three topical areas: 1) Good Health; 2) Strong Families; 3) Positive Early Learning Experiences; and includes an additional section on systems of care that link and intersect these three topical areas.
The website also provides the opportunity to join the ZERO TO THREE Policy Network. There are other interesting subsections regarding zero-to-three issues available from the menu on the left side of the Policy page including links to Federal, State and Community policy issues. There is also a link to elected and local officials, current legislative issues, election results and a media guide in the Take Action subsection.
