Hi, I'm Joshua Horwitz. I'm the executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence. A little bit of myself and our organization, the coalition has a 501c4 status, which means when I work with the coalition, I spend the majority of my time doing lobbying. When I spend time with the Educational Fund, we have a 501c3 tax status, which means we spend most of our time on research and policy education in a limited amount of time on lobbying. For both organizations, our mission is to make gun violence rare and abnormal, and we worked through a public health and equity framework. I've been at this for over 30 years and I've helped to identify and develop successful policy change in areas including extreme risk protection orders, micro stamping, and funding intervention programs among a bunch of other different things. Also in 2020, I was the integral part of the efforts in Virginia that led to the passage of over a dozen new gun laws. Am also a proud member of the team here at Hopkins where I teach introduction to health advocacy, and I look forward to seeing some of you in my class for a term. In this lecture, we're going to talk about three different things. First, we're going to talk about identifying the components of a public health advocacy campaign. How do you develop a plan for good advocacy? Second, good advocacy always entails good messaging. So, how are we going to understand and learn to trade impactful and what I call sticky messaging? Sticky messaging is messaging that you remember, and it's impactful. Then the next item is, how to put some of these things together so that we can build a successful elevator speech. There's really not a standard model for advocacy, but there are some features that come up in all good plans. The model we're going to talk about is mine, and it's based on the years of experience and how I actually work. When we think about messaging, we need to think about messaging both to targeted sections of the public, and to policy makers because both are an essential part of advocacy. I'm going to make this plea repeatedly. Please think about messaging without relying on a few slide of statistics. In the world that I work in, it's not a cigar-fill back room where you get to make an impression, but it is in small moments where policy makers give you their attention. In an elevator, walking down the hall, on the way to a vote, in a double book median in their office, and you need to learn how to make the most of all of these opportunities. In this section, we're going to talk about the advocacy model and as I mentioned, this is the model that I use and had some success with. When I work with public health professionals and students I hear this all the time, "I hope someone reads this paper I just spent two years working on. I hope somebody does something about this problem. I hope congress or the state legislature passes a law on banning trans fats or supplies more money for healthcare or does something about police violence. " Well, we all [inaudible]. Part of what we do as public health professionals is professionally put our work into journals, but that's just a part of it. We need to become advocates. The reason we need to become advocates is because hope alone, it's a necessary component of advocacy to necessary component of our work, but it's not sufficient to change the world. If you want to change the world, you have to change policy and you have to work at it. The good news is that this is a golden age of advocacy. There are so many opportunities out there. I encourage you to get off the sidelines. Sometimes taking action can lead to uncomfortable moments. It can lead to conflict, it can lead to sometimes embarrassment. It can sometimes leave yourself asking,'' Why did I take the risk?'' But the upside is if you don't get out of your comfort zone, you're never going to accomplish these big policy goals. This class is going to give you an introduction to develop a comfort level with being an advocate and being out there leading in pushing for something you really believe in, and that the evidence says it's importan Again, if we want to change the world, we have to become advocates. This slide is a reminder of what advocacy is all about. It's the process of supporting a cause or a proposal. Someone who supports their cause and works hard for it, is an advocate. What I'm asking this class to think about is, how to become an advocate and what do you really care about? What is your cause or proposal? How do you take it out of the academic journal, out of the academy and make it work in the world?
