How to be a Successful Advocate

Top 10 tips for advocacy:
1. get to know your legislators well (district, voting records, etc.)
2. establish a relationship (try making an introduction before you need their help)
3. get to know the legislator's staff that handles your issue of concern
4. learn about legislative or administrative process
5. identify fellow advocates and partners
6. be open to negotiation (compromise)
7. be polite and remember "thank-yous"
8. be honest straightforward and realistic (don't make promises you can't keep)
9. timing is everything (contact as early as possible)
10. be sure to follow up with legislator and staff (thank yous and information)

Public Health Policy/Advocacy

Public Health Advocacy Process: The What
- Framing the problem - stories, pictures, metaphors, and data depicting the impact on people
- Creating the vision: What it would be like if the problem did not exist
- Describing the solutions - examples
- Requesting the action
- Confirming the response
- Follow-up

Public Health Advocacy Process: The Opportunity
- Researching opportunities - focus on the informal one
-Linking to policy's makers interests and schedule
- Orchestrating the moment
-Planning the next opportunity

Key: Forming a relationship between representative and constituent

Public Policy

Public Policy Goals:

Equity: Treating likes alike (who is not?) who is out?
Liberty: ability to do as you wish as long as you do not harm to others
Security: satisfaction of minimum human needs
Efficiency: getting the most output for  given input

Is equity always fair? NO

Equity: Horizontal and Vertical

Liberty: What harms to individuals should trigger restraints on liberty?
What harms to communities, organizations, groups should trigger restraints on liberty?
Whose liberty should be curtailed, and by how much, and for how long?

Security: Some dimensions of need
- protecting one's whole identity vs. simple survival
-Measured according to an absolute standard or relative one, comparing one with another
- Meet immediate needs only, or enable people to fulfill broader needs

Public Health Policy/Advocacy

Public Health Policy is when an organization and/or individual makes the choice to "push" for a cause.  it is about making choices and having a strong belief that something can change.

Do you think that the Health Care Reform: Patient Protection Act is in a status quote?  If yes, what is your opinion on it?

Quality Improvement: Cultural & Linguistic Competence and Health Care: 8 Tips To Improving Communication Among Health Car...

Quality Improvement: Cultural & Linguistic Competence and Health Care: 8 Tips To Improving Communication Among Health Car...: "Too often we hear organizations, hospitals, practitioners, and families wondering about effective ways to improving communication between pr..."

8 Tips To Improving Communication Among Health Care Providers

Too often we hear organizations, hospitals, practitioners, and families wondering about effective ways to improving communication between primary care providers and specialists.  Here are 7 tips that I give to Dao Management Consulting Services clients, but first lets define communication within the realm of health care.

Communication is a broad term, it can mean different things to providers, depending from what angle they are looking at it.  Communication in health care can mean improving referral follow-up, providing reports to referring physicians, use care coordination as a vehicle to maintaining an open door relationship with multiple providers, and/or using tools such as communication logs, care plans to communicate with a specialist their patient's condition and treatment.

In a research conducted by Internal Medicine,  researchers found that perceptions of communication between physicians varied greatly.

• 69.3% of PCPs reported "always" or "most of the time" sending notification of a patient's history and reason for consultation to specialists, but only 34.8% of specialists said they "always" or "most of the time" received such notification.
• 80.6% of specialists said they "always" or "most of the time" send consultation results to the referring PCP, but only 62.2% of PCPs said they received such information.
• Physicians who reported not receiving timely communication were more likely to report that their ability to provide high-quality care was threatened. 

8 tips for greater communication:

1. Identify specific issues between providers from a broader perspective;
2. Understand providers practice culture;
3. Do not make assumptions about what providers need as tools to communicate with each other, ask;
4. Based on providers needs, create tools or systems that will facilitate "easy" communication;
5. Ask providers for feedback on strategies and their reaction to them;
6. Facilitate face to face meeting or virtual meeting between primary care and specialist;
7. Involve providers as part of their own system change;
8. Use care coordination as part of providers communication

Helen Dao, MHA
www.daoconsultingservices.com

Evaluation: Improving Care for children and Youth with Epilepsy

What are some of the challenges that organizations implementing the needs evaluation face when trying to collect results?  What are some of the best techniques in getting pediatric neurologists and pediatricians in completing the evaluation?

Helen Dao
www.daoconsultingservices.com