With the right tools, advocates around the world can drive life-saving policies. The Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI) has updated our Advocacy Action Guide to help public health advocates to plan, organize and implement effective advocacy. Based on over 25 years of advocacy experience from staff and partners around the world, the guide explores the step-by-step processes and systems needed to achieve sustainable policy change.
The guide takes the reader through four phases of advocacy: Analyze, Collaborate, Advocate and Sustain. Each phase includes detailed steps to support strategic and effective advocacy outcomes. The guide provides an overview of our approach, paired with accessible case studies from GHAI, our partners and staff from our parent organization, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The guide also includes templates and worksheets to support advocates in tailoring the advocacy approach to their contexts. “Whichever level you find yourself advocating in, you can make a difference,” Eliana Monteforte, Director of Special Projects, Global Health Council (GHC), said during the guide’s official launch, with was co-hosted on April 10, 2024 by GHC and GHAI. Advocacy enables impacted groups to influence the government policies that shape public health outcomes. Rachel Morrison, Senior Advisor for the Caribbean at GHAI, explained during the launch webinar that youth in Caribbean have been inspired by the principle “Nothing about us without us,” and tools from the guide have helped them put it into practice. Morrison works with coalitions of youth advocates for healthy school feeding policies in the Caribbean, many of whom are students themselves with a personal stake in the policy outcomes. By applying some of the approaches outlined in the guide, they have become among the most powerful advocates for the health of students in the region.
The Advocacy Action Guide is available in English, Spanish and French at: bit.ly/advocacyactionguide
