Public Health Pronto: Module 2.3

1. How to Advance Yourself as an MCH Leader (Implementation Strategies). Identify your personal strengths and areas of growth by taking Domain 2 of the Competency Assessments for Public Health Professionals developed by the Public Health Foundation. You can take the assessment related to your professional position (front-line and entry-level staff; program managers and supervisors; or senior management and executive level staff).
2. How to Find and Use Tools to Help You (Information Strategy). Policy is one potentially effective way to improve the health of populations. Can you summarize your role in translating evidence and science into policy? This website describes what policy is and the process by which it is conceptualized, developed, adopted, and evaluated. You can use this analytical framework as a guide to identify, analyze, and prioritize policies that can improve health. Learn more about the domains of the policy process including stakeholder engagement and education, and evaluation.
   
3. How to Activate Your Organization (Organizational Strategy). Maternal and child health (MCH) professionals play an important role in the policy process, for example, by promoting and implementing evidence-based interventions. The health advantages of breastfeeding for infants and mothers is well-documented. Encouraging business and public agencies to establish supportive policies that enable women to successfully return to work and breastfeed sends a message to all employees that breastfeeding is valued. Does your organization have a company-wide lactation support program? If so, do you know who administers the program? Is the policy communicated to all current employees and included in new employee orientation training? Can you communicate the Business Case for Breastfeeding? Find steps for getting started, methods for measuring success, and tools for employers such as this model Policy for Supporting Breastfeeding Employees.
   
4. How to Incorporate Partners (Systems Strategy). About 1 in 4 children aged 2 to 5 years are overweight or have obesity. Improvements in early child care and education (ECE) providers and the policies under which they operate can directly affect what children eat and drink and how active they are. It can also help children develop a foundation of healthy habits. This report shows that states have incorporated many areas of the Spectrum of Opportunities into their ECE obesity prevention efforts, including state policy levers such as licensing and system supports such as professional development. Is your state among those listed? Consider how these findings and examples could help to guide future ECE obesity prevention efforts and inform decision makers about existing policy and system supports for ECE obesity prevention in your state or community.
   
5. How to Engage Your Communities (Community Strategy). Working with communities and systems requires detailed planning before it can be translated into impactful work conducted over time, but how do you start your planning process? If policy is to keep pace with rapidly changing science, the public must participate. Every day individuals advocate on behalf of themselves or others to communicate needs, share experiences, and take steps to get what they want and need. The Genetic Alliance, Parent to Parent USA, and Family Voices collected tools and resources from their combined networks to create the Advocacy ATLAS to assist individuals and their families in advocating for whatever they may need. Individuals and families played an integral role in designing the toolkit, providing guidance and feedback during each step of development. Families also shared personal stories about advocacy to be included in the toolkit. View these archived webinars to learn more about the Advocacy ATLAS and to hear stories from self and parent advocates about their experiences with advocacy. Do you integrate the experiences of individuals and families in your communities in your policy process? If so, how?

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Click for Discussion Form

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Tell us how you will use what you have learned:

• I loved the concrete suggestions for policy brief writing.
• I liked listening to the webinars provided that went over advocacy for parents, and included resources these parents had found or created along the way. It was good to see what things looked like from a perspective I don't normally get to see.
• I really liked the resources offered for this section. In regard to Implementation of Strategies there were some great resources integrated into the material that give a concrete, step by step outline, of how to start the process of making new policy.

How Participants Will Use What They Learned:

• I will definitely use the strategic plan and SWOT analysis in my work as a healthcare administrator when attempting to take a look into the future of my organization and planning.
• To help create policy briefs.
• Having an understanding of how policy is developed and adopted will allow me to advocate for patients and the services they need as policies change over time.
• It will help me digest policy briefs and consider more angles when writing my own.