Outside-the-Box Advocacy: Organizing Public Health’s Engagement in Built Environment Advocacy (50m Lecture)

Recently, the buzz phrase “Health in All Policies” has almost become ubiquitous, especially in public health’s efforts to come to the land use planning and

infrastructure design discussion. Public health has also seen dollars for marketing and education aimed at our community decision makers and their constituents become more valuable, whether by reduced funding, higher demand for health messaging, or both. Throughout 2012 and 2013, Tulsa Health Department has engaged with the Tulsa regional area Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Council, Tulsa’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, City of Tulsa planning and engineering staff, and various health minded coalitions to bring health and the built environment together in the minds of decision makers and the community. This presentation will tell Tulsa’s success story and provide tangible action steps to implement healthy built environment advocacy efforts. Participants will interact in small groups to discuss the process by which situational circumstance focuses advocacy messaging and share ideas among other groups. Through this interactive session, participants will walk away with innovative techniques to employ in their jurisdiction with limited resources in order to educate and advocate for health with decision makers, the public and most importantly, their own agencies.