Model for Health Policy Advocacy-a community university partnership

Southeastern Michigan's Washtenaw County has a vibrant public health community with a firmly established coalition of health leaders. This coalition, known as the Health Improvement Plan (HIP), led by the Washtenaw County Public Health Department (WCPH), supports its member through monitoring health-related data, prioritizing health issues, sharing successful strategies, facilitating collaborations, and identifying resources. Since 1995, HIP has been an active and productive leader within our community, but the good work of HIP was little known by our state and local government. To disseminate the work of HIP to governmental officials, a community university partnership was created between the Community Engagement Program at UM's Michigan Institute for Clinical & Health Research (MICHR), Governmental Relations at UM's School of Public Health (SPH) and WCPH to address the information void surrounding priorities on behalf of local community. Together, this partnership has created an easily replicated model for health policy advocacy and change. Specifically, it began with training from Governmental Relations on strategies for successful advocacy. Then, partners were taught on how to write policy briefs with well targeted simple messages, a tool was created to compile relevant information on state representatives tracking their support on health related issues. Audience specific scripts were developed, and members from our community health coalition were selected to meet with each government leader. Through this process, this partnership was able to educate on and advocate for current health policy, create avenues for information sharing, and most importantly to establish HIP as an ongoing resource for state legislators.