This Playbook can help public health professionals put their ideas into practice and give our kids a new front line of defense from harmful body and beauty ideals, one that stays ahead of the health threats by tackling both cause and effect.
Effective advocacy takes practice, but it’s worth the effort. It can take many years to pass statewide laws and the goal is to get a little closer with each legislative session. We hope these tools and the guidance in this Playbook prepares you for success. Your campaign plan starts here.
Below are our campaigns with supporting materials for you to get started:
Final Thoughts
Perhaps someday, advocacy training and practice will be part of the core curriculum in well-rounded public health education. Until then, leaders like you will help transform the public health profession by showing what is possible when we stop studying, debating, and perfecting, the merits of our proposed interventions in academic settings and start putting those interventions into practice by taking those issues to the very governmental bodies that have the power to give us what we want.
Because public health is shaped by countless systems and structures, we would benefit from having better public health representation at all of those tables. One last idea we want to leave you with is the strong encouragement to think about running for office yourself someday or serving in an appointed capacity, even on a local committee or board. It may seem like a crazy or even unappealing idea, but please consider yourself asked and encouraged to run and to seat your public health expertise directly at the decision-making table.
We, at STRIPED, would love to hear about your advocacy campaign along the way so we can share lessons learned with other advocates. We are all in this together and what works in Boston may just as well in Baton Rouge!
Please reach out with comments, questions, and suggestions at striped@hsph.harvard.edu. And thank you for your willingness to use your political power to improve the lives of others.
For more information on the Power Prism®, please contact My Power People, LLC.
Credits page for the STRIPED Advocacy Playbook team.
