Communities working in partnership: Building capacity for public health advocacy

There have been increasing calls for community-academic-practice partnerships to effect structural change in communities through engaging the participation of community members in public health advocacy. To have a broader and more sustained effect on health, successful models for influencing policy aim to enhance the capacity of community residents and organizations to engage in the policy change process.

In this presentation, we will describe the “Neighborhoods Working in Partnership: Building Capacity for Policy Change” program, being conducted by the Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center (URC) in partnership with PolicyLink. The goals are to: strengthen policy advocacy skills within local neighborhoods; extend community voices into the policy making arena; and have an impact, at multiple levels, on policies aimed at creating healthy neighborhoods. We will describe the two-step process we undertook to: 1) strengthen the capacity of URC partners and other individuals to train community members to engage in public health advocacy; and 2) enhance the capacity of adult and youth community residents to conduct effective public health advocacy. Our methods included a 2-day Train-the-Trainers workshop conducted by PolicyLink in which we had over fifty participants. After the workshops, thirteen community and academic trainers carried out 4-session workshops in 7 neighborhoods in Detroit with approximately 175 residents participating. We will present the methods used to evaluate the training workshops (e.g., knowledge pre-assessment, satisfaction questionnaire, post-assessment). We will discuss findings and lessons learned and implications for engaging community members in capacity building models aimed at promoting public health advocacy to effect structural change