By Shelley Hearne, DrPH, MPH, Director, Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy
With today’s turbulent climate, the future of public health can feel uncertain. Trust in public health leaders has slipped. Resources are shrinking. Longstanding policies are being questioned and uprooted.
How do we move forward? The only way forward is through – and to get through, our public health workforce must lean into its core values. We understand the importance of listening to the communities we serve, engaging where they are, respecting their values, and finding common ground.
Now, we must focus on applying these same principles and practices in building relationships with the decisionmakers making policies that most affect our health. How can we ensure that our workforce is equipped for the challenge?
Growing Momentum
The good news is that our governmental workforce is hungry for these skills. The most recent national Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey (PH WINS) shows that policy engagement is a top training need and want among the public health workforce, regardless of their skill level.
Unfortunately, there is inadequate advocacy training for the public health field. Part of this training gap stems from the lack of standardized advocacy-related competencies across schools and programs of public health. Many graduates enter the field without sufficient preparation for real-world policy engagement. An analysis of MPH curricula from nearly 100 schools and programs of public health found that very few courses focus on advocacy skill instruction or cover all essential advocacy skills.
The Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy is taking the lead to transform our nation’s public health education landscape by partnering with national public health organizations, including the Public Health Foundation, to define public health advocacy and its essential skills, and create guidance to help schools and programs incorporate it into their curriculum.
Education and training are essential, but relationships are equally critical. Effective policy change depends on restoring trust with both policymakers and the communities affected by their decisions. Nothing moves without trust.
Public health professionals must invest in authentic relationships with policymakers and the public: relationships built on evidence, humility, consistency, and empathy.
Meeting the Need
To move public health forward, our workforce must have access to opportunities for skill development to help them be confident, competent advocates.
At the Lerner Center, we envision a diverse, dynamic field of advocates ready to solve the greatest public health challenges of our time. Through practice-based scholarship, education, training, and partnerships, we are committed to being a leading catalyst and resource for policy change.
Over the next several years, we will champion a stronger public health field by developing advocacy education requirements, building an evidence base for effective public health advocacy, and strengthening the skills and competencies of the public health workforce.
Advocacy takes many forms, and each of us has a part to play in rebuilding trust and support with the people shaping the policies that affect our health.
Visit the Lerner Center website to access free resources and find ways to help build greater political will for public health.
Subscribe to the Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy newsletter for updates on the latest in public health advocacy.
About the Author
Shelley Hearne, DrPH, MPH
Director, Johns Hopkins Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy
Dr. Hearne has spent over three decades as a change maker bent on boosting the health, safety, and sustainability of our planet and the people on it. She works with foundations, policy-makers, business and non-profit sectors to tackle some of the thorniest health and environmental issues of the day: from pandemic response to health policy strategies for reducing preventable risks in our everyday lives
In 2021, she became full time faculty as the Deans Sommer and Klag Distinguished Professor of the Practice for Public Health Advocacy and director of the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy. Dr. Hearne also serves as the executive director of the Forsythia Foundation.
Most recently, she was the founding president of CityHealth, an initiative of the de Beaumont Foundation and Kaiser Permanente, and executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, representing the lead health officials of the nation’s largest cities. She also was managing director of the Pew Health Group of The Pew Charitable Trusts, overseeing its food safety, medical safety, research, and biomedical programs.
Dr. Hearne founded and led the Trust for America’s Health, a national health advocacy organization dedicated to preventing epidemics and protecting people.
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