Health policy advocacy

A one-page formal advocacy letter on childhood obesity, addressed to a named change agent, with a specific ask, cited statistics, and a personal story — written as correspondence rather than as an essay about advocacy.

An assignment identifying a problem in your state, community or organisation that has the capacity for advocacy through legislation, researching the issue, and completing the Advocacy Through Legislation template with three recent nursing-relevant sources.

A nursing policy question with a choice most students miss, where the Wald half asks for a defended judgement rather than a biography and the IOM half is a research task against a report whose headline deadlines have already expired.

A Collaborative Learning Community PowerPoint of 12-15 slides with 100-250 word slide notes: identify a current health care legislative issue, describe the proposed legislation and your group's stance, set out how to track a bill and lobby on it, outline your lobbying remarks, and state the implications if the effort fails.

A two to three paragraph discussion post using the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation tobacco timeline documents: explain why the 1964 Surgeon General's report turned the tide of smoking and what effect it had on policy makers, then identify two further changes that affected tobacco consumption, describe their effects and say which populations they most affected.

Identify a problem in your community with the capacity to be legislated, research it, and state a proposal on the Legislative Worksheet in SBAR format: situation, background, assessment of finances and stakeholders, and a recommendation. 600-700 words, APA not required.

Evaluate the structural features rather than the parties — where decisions are made, on what cycles, and who has standing — because those are what determine whether a nurse can influence anything.

Describe one strategy you would use as a professional nurse to make policymakers aware of insurance coverage and access issues that drive diverse health outcomes, and explain why you chose it.

"Three legs" is in quotation marks because it comes from the chapter. A general account of lobbying fails a named requirement.

Analyse the roles, patient empowerment and values needed to be an effective nurse advocate and policy player, discuss the APN role as a change agent with an example, address how the role is implemented at organisational, state and national level, and give your view on whether advocacy works given the limited evidence base.

Reflecting on your own community, identify three issues affecting its health, summarise the level of government involvement in each, judge whether more or less involvement would improve them, and propose solutions.