Designed for public health practitioners, lawyers, researchers and scientists, government and healthcare officials, and business and community leaders, this three-part webinar series, co-sponsored by the Network for Public Health Law (NPHL) and the Center for Public Health Law Research, explored the interdisciplinary messaging teamwork necessary to fashion legal and policy interventions in these politically polarized times. The series was originally hosted in Fall/Winter 2017.
Webinar One: Crafting Richer Public Health Messages using Moral Foundations Theory
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Effective messaging of public health challenges and interventions is essential to public health practice and especially to implementing public health laws and policies in a polarized political environment. It is easy for public health leaders to become consumed with the ongoing political and resource shifts taking place in public health and health care. However, it is also clear that those in public health, at all levels, want to engage more deeply and meaningfully with communities of all backgrounds who are burdened by poor health. Using Moral Foundations Theory, the speakers will explain how liberals and conservative audiences resonate differently to six intuitive foundational moral values. This session will explore crafting messages that embrace all six foundational values so that public health practitioners may engage a broader base of support and develop new community partnerships.
Webinar Two: Messaging and the 5 Essential Public Health Law Services
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The 2016 Five Essential Public Health Law Services framework reflects the key scientific, legal, and advocacy activities necessary to support the timely adoption and diffusion of effective public health legal and policy interventions. The services are not all purely legal, nor are they provided only by lawyers. Instead, researchers and scientists, government officials and practitioners, and business, community, faith, and other leaders may all be involved in any given activity. The Five Essential Public Health Law Services were developed from and based upon public health law success stories, like that of tobacco control. In this webinar, the presenters will explain their research over the past year exploring how this framework can be employed to more successfully advance public health law initiatives, with specific focus on preemption, housing code enforcement, and early childhood care and education. Presenters will also discuss how the messaging used to advance public health laws, when crafted in a way that embraces the full range of intuitive moral values, may lead to broader community and political support for successfully developing, enacting and then enforcing new legal solutions.
Webinar Three: Lessons and Examples for State and Local Advocacy
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In turbulent political times, crafting public health messages that resonate across differing political ideologies is more important and challenging than ever. In this webinar, the presenters will offer practical examples of how public health issues have been effectively communicated across party lines in the politically divided state of North Carolina through the application of Moral Foundations Theory. Examples include successfully advocating for sterile needle exchange, invoking community loyalty to support healthcare system collaborations using GIS mapping, and developing partnerships with faith communities to promote health. Based on these examples and a wealth of experience, the presenters will provide public health practitioners and advocates with tools, advice and strategies to assist them in looking deeper into distressed communities to understand the community’s values, needs, and complexity, and to focus locally to design solutions alongside diverse coalitions that may include faith networks, law enforcement, healthcare providers, and other (sometimes unexpected) stakeholders.
