Planning, implementing, and assessing healthy, equitable policy advocacy: Gear for advocates and their allies

Persistent health disparities in communities across the country underscore the important role of policy change to impact the social determinants of health and advance health equity. Changing the conditions that affect low-income people and communities of color through policy advocacy can require complex processes with many players and shifting tactics. Getting Equity Advocacy Results (GEAR) is a new resource for planning and tracking the progress of equitable advocacy and policy change. Drawing from the wisdom and experience of seasoned advocates and action researchers, GEAR features benchmarks for equity advocacy and tools for their application. This presentation will introduce the GEAR framework and describe ways in which health advocates and their allies can use benchmarks related to ongoing organizing, research, capacity building, and communications across the multiple stages of a campaign to strengthen the effectiveness of advocacy for equity, identify opportunities to drive equitable change, obtain feedback for advocacy improvement, and demonstrate the many tangible interim impacts of campaigns for health equity.