Engaging Innovative Advocates as Public Health Champions

From FHI (formerly known as Family Health International), this 4-page brief focuses on the strategy of engaging "public health champions" to facilitate the speed and ease with which research results are incorporated into public health policy, programmes, or clinical practice on issues such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and family planning (FP). A public health champion is an influential political leader, health care provider, or other authority figure who uses his or her expertise and professional contacts to promote the use of evidence-based and best practices and to bridge the gap between research and programmes. The brief explores: the value of this approach to advocacy, FHI's experiences and lessons learned from champion programmes, examples of other organisations implementing similar activities, and recommendations for groups interested in designing or supporting champion initiatives.

Table 1 in the brief features organisations that have recently engaged champions to promote family planning programmes. To illustrate the advocacy model in more depth, the brief features a case study of FHI's Network of Champions project. Since 2004, and with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), FHI has designed and managed initiatives such as the Network of Champions (NOC), which engaged participants from 8 countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to promote awareness and application of underutilised contraceptive technology and reproductive health research findings through partnerships with local stakeholders such as health professionals, policymakers, and advocacy groups. Champions worked to advance FP/HIV integration in their respective countries, both at the policy and programme levels. For instance, in Tanzania, the executive secretary of a private nurse-midwife association oversaw a community needs assessment, provider trainings, integrated service provision with ongoing monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and advocacy for national-level policymakers.

Strengths, challenges, lessons learned, questions for future consideration, and recommendations for future champion initiatives are outlined. For instance, one objective of the NOC was to facilitate an active network among the champions, which would allow for sharing resources, exchanging ideas, and providing feedback and support. Although all of the champions felt that having a network was important, they often found it difficult to maintain connections with champions in other countries. So, one suggestion is: "As an alternative to creating an externally facilitated network dependent on regional or international exchange, encourage champions to develop a local network of supportive peers." Amongst the other communication-centred recommendations: "An advocacy effort focused on using champions may work best when individuals who are already considered influential within their spheres are engaged to promote an issue. It is likely that their standing as opinion leaders is more important for creating impact than their original level of support for the issue. Thus, engaging influential people to take up a specific cause may be more effective than engaging known supporters of an issue who are not considered opinion leaders."

Download information is available below; hard copies are also available by writing to publications@fhi.org