Challenges and facilitating factors of community organizing for policy change: Lessons learned from a policy advocacy capacity building training for residents of Detroit

There have been increasing calls for reducing health disparities through policy change and engaging underrepresented communities in the policy change process. In order to increase capacity of Detroit residents to advocate for policy change, The Detroit Community-Academic Urban Research Center developed and implemented the Neighborhoods Working in Partnership (NWP) program, a community-based participatory research project. Community leaders and academic partners conducted a four-session, skill-building training on advocating for policy change to address social justice issues. A total of 228 community residents from across several Detroit neighborhoods participated in the training.

To evaluate the impact of the NWP project, five group interviews were conducted six months after the training with adult and youth participants who were identified as being active in policy advocacy activities. In this presentation, we will describe the challenges and facilitating factors of organizing for policy change that these participants identified. These factors include those related to working with other community members and groups, identifying and prioritizing policy issues, challenging structures of power, and working with policy makers. We will describe lessons learned, including next steps for increasing community members' capacity to advocate for policy change.