Advocacy & Public Health: Legislative Advocacy to Advance Injury & Violence Prevention

Catalog description

This course is designed to provide the foundational context and practical skills necessary to effectively identify public health problems as they relate to field of injury and violence prevention (IVP), craft evidence-based solutions and advocate for those solutions in furtherance of public health objectives via legislative advocacy. This interactive class hosts speakers, practices skills, has students make visits to national and regional lawmakers, and results in a final product of an advocacy packet to address an IVP topic of their choosing. We will explore the entire legislative advocacy process from the identification of a problem and evaluation of possible public health policy solutions to utilizing the full range of advocacy tools to promote policy change. The class is broken into two parts. Part one focuses on federal budgeting and consists of pass-fail assignments preparing students for the required Hill Visits with national partners to Washington, D.C. on March 20th to advocate Congress for IVP funding in the FY26 budget. Part two builds on the knowledge and skills gain in part one so students can identify an evidence-based policy solution for which they will prepare a final advocacy packet to address a local (state or city) need. This includes a local visit to a lawmaker students set up on their own and final recommendations on how to advance the policy. The final product receives a letter grade.