Health in All Policies: A House of Cards: Teaching Students to be Politically Astute

Background: In 2014, the Virginia legislative assembly resembled the House of Cards TV series in a fight that eventually denied healthcare for 400,000 Virginians in the health coverage gap. In a complex and sometimes contentious healthcare environment, it is critical that health professionals be politically astute in their advocacy for healthcare for all. The purpose of this study is to determine if a health policy summit impacts the political astuteness of nursing, health administration and social work students.

Methods: Eighty-two interprofessional students attended a ½ day summit, entitled Mind the Gap, to propose solutions to provide health care to those without coverage.  Students were enrolled in a health policy or other course that taught health policy concepts. Political Astuteness was measured using the 40-item Political Astuteness Inventory (Cronbach’s alpha .81; Clark, 2008) which measures components of political awareness, knowledge and engagement. Pre and Post data were analyzed via SPSS using descriptive frequencies and paired t-test comparison. Team Based Learning strategies were used to facilitate discussion and proposals for solutions to the coverage gap.

Results. Student groups developed innovative proposals and selected 3 for presentation to the state legislators who attended the summit. Students demonstrated a significant improvement in political astuteness (t -2.78, 95% CI -5 to -0.8, p = 0.007).

Conclusions. Student learning is enhanced and political astuteness significantly improves using interprofessional activities to advocate for healthcare access. Students must be inspired and taught to work passionately to advocate so that all will have access to quality, affordable healthcare.