Advocacy is part of the job description

The task of local health departments is to protect, monitor and provide for the public's health. At times, these duties can be carried out most effectively through policies that impact populations at various levels. Three of the 10 Essential Public Health Services identify advocacy roles for public health in empowering people, mobilizing communities, and developing policies and plans that support individual and community health efforts. However, the Institute of Medicine, in its 1988 call to action, The Future of Public Health and in Who Will Protect the Public's Health (1994) identifies a discrepancy between the policy and advocacy roles public health should play and what workers are prepared to and actually do. This presentation identifies barriers and enabling factors related to advocacy skills, as defined by health advocates and policy makers and as reported by state and local public health workers. Interviews and surveys of public health directors and workers were used to determine if advocacy skills such as coalition building, educating policy makers and commenting on existing regulation are or are not commonly used. The factors that enable or prohibit the use of these skills by local health department workers were identified. A variety of advocacy skills will be presented with the goal of identifying approaches that public health workers can employ.