 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Lydia Pendley, Executive Director, New Mexico Public Health Association, 24 Loma Serena, Santa Fe, NM 87506, 505-983-1495, lpendley1@juno.com
The New Mexico Public Health Association (NMPHA) obtained a grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation to develop and conduct workshops to enhance the public policy and media advocacy skills within the state. NMPHA formed two working committees, one on each topic, to develop and organize the trainings in various parts of the state. The committees identified and/or developed appropriate content, trainers and evaluation methods for each training. The NMPHA Executive Director organized the trainings and ensured that training materials were assembled. Workshop evaluations were highly positive including the measure on participants' views of NMPHA as an organization. Lessons learned include: a local public health association can increase visibility and credibility by providing training on essential public health skills; there is a high level of need and interest for public policy and media advocacy training that NMPHA has the credibility to fulfill; high quality trainings can be conducted using the talent within NMPHA and its partners; momentum developed during the organization and implementation of the trainings motivation to utilize the energy and skills of those involved in the trainings to generate additional action for media advocacy and public policy activity; providing training opens up networking with a much wider variety of “public health workers and advocates;” successful trainings have raised the challenge of how to carry on and institutionalize these trainings.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Advocacy, Media Advocacy
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.