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The United States Institute of Medicine wrote nearly two decades ago: “Should schools wish to be significant players in the future of public health and health care, dwelling on the science of public health without paying appropriate attention to both politics and policy will not be enough.”

Indeed, COVID has highlighted the extent to which “public health is political” and how important it is for both competent public health professionals and concerned citizens to be involved in influencing policy making.

One way to do this is through “advocacy,” which has been defined as: “the processes by which the actions of individuals or groups attempt to bring about social and/or organization change on behalf of a particular health goal, program, interest, or population.”

Some of the most common forms of advocacy are through newsletters, generating news media attention—which may include letters to the editor or “op-ed” pieces in newspapers or online news outlets—and lobbying or educating political officials.

Yet, despite the importance of our being involved in policy making on global health, most (public and) global health programs spend very little time teaching students about the importance of advocacy or how to engage in it.

One way to address this critical gap is to include in global health courses some assignments related to “advocacy,” as Victor Barbiero does in a course at the University of New Mexico. Professor Barbiero asks his students to write an “op-ed” piece on a “health issue of the day” for submission to the Albuquerque Journal. They must write it with simplicity and clarity for a lay audience. The piece must be no longer than 600 words. As guidance, Professor Barbiero gives the students examples of what he considers good op-ed pieces. This year, the Albuquerque Journal devoted an entire page to four student pieces, presented with a brief note from Professor Barbiero.

There is a wide range of information on advocacy for global health that can help students think conceptually about efforts to “bring public health science to bear on public policy.”

The article, “Advocacy for public health: a primer,” for example, nicely lays out a conceptual framework for considering the issue of concern, the audience one is trying to influence, and how one might advocate to exert the desired influence. 

The Global Health Advocacy Incubator has a range of tools for planning “advocacy campaigns.”

The University of California Global Health Institute has a guide to global health advocacy. Part of the guide is oriented toward engaging legislators in the United States; however, it could easily be adapted to legislators in other countries.

Our students should also be aware of and learn from organizations that engage in advocacy as a core part of their global health work. One of the most important of these is Global Health Strategies, which is involved in advocacy efforts related to a wide range of activities in global health.

An important global health advocacy network of quite a different type is ACTION. This is “a partnership of locally-rooted organizations around the world that advocate for life-saving care for millions of people who are threatened by preventable diseases.” Action has been especially involved in advocacy on tuberculosis.

In addition, there are many other organizations of varying sizes, from the local to the global, that engage on advocacy in public and global health. Students could benefit from exploring the important health advocacy organizations within different countries.

It is also important to note that advocacy is an important part of the mission of all major organizational actors in global health, such as UNICEF, the World Bank, WHO, and the Gates Foundation. Students also could learn much from looking at some of their advocacy work for global health broadly and on specific global health topics.

At the end of the day, if we want the world to be a better place, we need to speak up and do what we can to help ensure that policymaking is based on science and evidence. Although there is much to cover in global health courses, I highly recommend carving out some time to help students learn to think conceptually about advocacy and to practice engaging in advocacy themselves.

In the last several years, in fact, I have devoted an important share of my time to advocacy work in my community. You can see here some of my efforts at “advocacy” here.

(Thanks to Rachel Skolnik Light and Paul Jensen for their helpful comments on this).

About the author: 

Richard Skolnik, MPA, has spent more than 40 years working on international development and global health and was formerly a lecturer in the Yale School of Public Health, the Yale School of Management, and the George Washington University School of Public Health.

Request a digital review copy of his book, Global Population Health: A Primer
Request a digital review copy of his book, Global Health 101, Fourth Edition