Development of a peer mentoring program for building the tobacco control capacity of communities: The Los Angeles County Experience

Funding from the federal Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) initiative has provided funding opportunities for local jurisdictions to engage in tobacco control policy work. The jurisdictions' success depends on readiness to carry out this work. To support these efforts, the CDC created the CPPW Resource Center, which included funding five peer mentoring communities. This presentation describes key lessons learned from approximately two years of experience in training communities to build their policy-making capacity by the Los Angeles County Tobacco Control Program (TCPP). Public health department staff often lacked policy-making experience and needed ready-made policy organizing tools. For example, TCPP provided training on the Policy Adoption and Implementation Model, a step-by-step approach for planning and implementing tobacco policy campaigns that separates the policy adoption and implementation process into five phases, each of which contains core activities (e.g., public opinion surveys are conducted during phase one, community assessment). Many public health departments also needed guidance in building tobacco policy-specific (smoke-free multiunit housing) coalitions that are critical for mobilizing communities; training to understand the complexities of legislative policy-making processes (e.g., choosing the right time to engage elected officials); and development of specific skills to impact this process (e.g., creating effective talking points for educational meetings with elected officials and public testimony). Other key lessons learned from the peer mentoring program will also be described. TCPP's experience with the peer mentoring program clearly shows that policy-making readiness can be develop relatively quickly through comprehensive training and provision of ready-made policy organizing tools.