Developing a Comprehensive Curriculum for Public Health Advocacy

There is a substantial gap in public health school curricula regarding advocacy. Development of such a curriculum faces three challenges: faculty lack advocacy skills and experience; the public health literature on effective advocacy is limited; and yet a successful curriculum must be scalable to meet the needs of approximately 9,000 public health students graduating each year. To meet these challenges, we propose a 100-hour interactive online curriculum in five sections: campaigning and organizing, policy making and lobbying, campaign communications, new media, and fund-raising. We outline the content for individual modules in each of these sections, describe how the curriculum would build on existing interactive learning and social media technologies, and provide readers the opportunity to test-drive excerpts of a module on grasstops organizing. Developing advocacy skills and expertise is critical to meeting the challenges of public health today, and we provide a blueprint for how such training might be brought to scale in the field.