Campaigns for Supporting Legislative Agendas in Healthcare Policies
Throughout your Session Long Project, you explored the different ways of influencing policymakers through a number of forms of letter writing. For the final segment of the SLP, you will explore the different ways of working with campaigns. As a health advocate, it is important to assist candidates that support your issues to help bring about the desired change. There are a number of different ways you can help contribute during the process.
Your Task
Using the Connecticut Health Policy toolbox (2013c) as a guide, write a 2-page paper addressing the following:
Identify 5 different ways you can assist a campaign with a similar health agenda as your own. Provide examples.
Identify the Responsibility(s) AND Competency(s) of a Health Education Specialist that assisting a campaign would fall under. Explain your choice.
Connecticut Health Policy. (2013c). The health advocacy toolbox: How to work with campaigns. Retrieved October 1, 2013 from http://www(dot)cthealthpolicy(dot)org/toolbox/legislative/campaigns.htm
Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE). (2010). Responsibilities and competencies. Retrieved October 1, 2013 from http://www(dot)sophe(dot)org/Responsibilities_Competencies.cfm
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2012). Healthy People 2020 topics and objectives: Health communication and health information technology. Retrieved October 1, 2013 from http://www(dot)healthypeople(dot)gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/overview.aspx?topicid=18
Health Care Reforms
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Institution:
Health Care Reforms
There are a number of ways that one can influence the policy makers with reference to health care legislations. It is possible to write different forms of letters to the legislators and influence their choices and mechanisms of implementing health care policies (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). At the same time, it is possible to participate in campaigns that are pushing for the same agenda. The premise of this paper is to elaborate on the various ways that one can work with campaigns, to support legislative agendas in health care policies, formulation and implementation.
Assisting Campaign for Health Care Reforms
One of the first steps to assisting in campaigns to push for policy revolution is through talking to the candidates of choice. This is significant as it is the first step to establishing if the candidates already support the policies you are championing for or if they would encourage the same in their campaign agendas if they didn't already have them on their list. Contacting candidates has to be proactive, so that one makes the initiative to contact the policy makers of choice (Connecticut Health Policy, 2013). One may contact the candidates through email or attend the campaign meetings to talk to them or even visiting them at the office or their residence. In most cases, the contact information is readily availed though the local voter registrars.
The second way one contributes to the campaigns and offers support to the preferential candidate is through spreading the message of the health reforms and the related policy changes. The central idea behind campaigning is getting as many voters to buy into the idea as possible. This means that the voters have to be made aware of the health reform agendas that are part of the main campaign. As such, spreading the message is crucial, through all means legal and necessary. One of the basic means of campaigning is wearing badges and related paraphernalia that clearly indicate the health care campaign agendas (Connecticut Health Policy, 2013). At the same time, distributing healthcare related reforms pamphlets and brochures is crucial as most of the voters will want to access more information about the reforms and the campaign agendas to help them make their decision.
Volunteering is the basic element of any campaign labor logistics. Most campaigns rely on the volunteers that come to their aid in support of the central ideas. As such, offering to volunteer for the campaigns is crucial to the achievement of the ideas one supports. There are quite a number of logistics that are involved in running a campaign (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012). Contributing as a volunteer may mean that one has to be open-minded and help in any way possible such as making calls, delivering food for the staff, distributing the literature material at the park and cleaning up the meeting centers. Every input at the campaign venues is considered positive as it all goes into making sure that the campaign management is efficient and effective to deliver on the promises (Connecticut Health Policy, 2013).
As mentioned earlier, campaigns involve a lot of logistics to run effectively, this means that there are a lot of costs to be incurred. Contributing to the campaigns does not just mean that one has to give out money in support of the logistics and the costs affiliated. One can also contribute through giving gifts and support implements. Therefore, one can offer to bring food to the volunteers, offer their fax machines, laptops, printers or even furniture to be used in as a means to support the health care reforms agendas in the campa...