3.2.2 Kathy Faulkner
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This document discusses the challenges an organization called Women's Health Queensland Wide faces in prioritizing advocacy efforts. It outlines a process for determining which issues to advocate for based on factors like whether the issue affects women's health, is consistent with government priorities, and benefits both women and the organization. The document also provides questions to consider at the strategic, management, and operational levels to guide advocacy planning and implementation.
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3.2.2 Kathy Faulkner
- 1. page: 1/9 So many issues ... so little time Prioritising advocacy Women’s Health Queensland Wide (Women’s Health) Kathy Faulkner, Manager Louise Whitaker, Management Committee
- 3. page: 3/9 HREOC Submission Inquiry into the sexualisation of children in the contemporary media environment 18 April 2008 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Source: http://www.health.qld.gov.au/n orthside/documents/northwest _chc.pdf Source: http://www.asu.asn.au/
- 4. page: 4/9 Advocacy at Women’s Health • To improve awareness of women’s health issues • To promote the organisation • To address health issues that affect women across Queensland
- 5. page: 5/9 The challenges ... Strategic • Political implications of taking a feminist position • Implications of provocative advocacy on funding • Context of other women’s services • Currency of the women’s health issue/ population group • Sustainability of Women’s Health as an organisation Operational • Core business • Clear goals • Limited resources • Risk assessment/ management
- 6. page: 6/9 Prioritising activities • Strategic planning Critique • SWOT analysis isn’t focused enough to direct priorities.
- 7. page: 7/9 Prioritising – what will we advocate about? Which issues? • Is this a women’s health issue arising from our service delivery and/ or within the women’s health sector? • Is this issue consistent with women’s health priorities identified in government policy? • Does this issue have state-wide implications? • Will advocacy on this issue benefit Queensland women as well as the organisation? What can we offer? • What aspects of our experience of these issues are unique? • What position does the organisation want to take on issues? • What do we specifically hope our actions will achieve? • How do we measure our success? What role should we play? • Is another organisation leading advocacy around this issue? • What can we value add?
- 8. page: 8/9 Specific issues - how will we advocate? Level 1 – Strategic • Is it in the strategic plan? • What did we say about cost/ benefit of being involved and the uniqueness of our contribution? • What will we achieve? • How will we know we’ve made a difference? Level 2 – Management • Where does it fit in operational plan? • What strategies will achieve our goals? • Which skills are needed and which position aligns with those skills? • Who is interested in/ motivated to be following this through? • What capacity is available? • Impact/ resource assessment. Level 3 – Operational • Whose work plan will it be allocated to? • Where do we record what we are doing/ not doing? • How do we report on what we are doing/ not doing? • What material resources are required?
- 9. page: 9/9 Discussion • Have you faced similar challenges in prioritising advocacy in your organisations? • How have you addressed these challenges? • Could anything be done differently to honour feminism more? • Any comments are welcome ...
- 10. page: 9/9 Discussion • Have you faced similar challenges in prioritising advocacy in your organisations? • How have you addressed these challenges? • Could anything be done differently to honour feminism more? • Any comments are welcome ...
Editor's Notes
- What we do etc Women’s Health Queensland Wide (Women’s Health) is a not for profit, health promotion, information and education service for women and health professionals throughout Queensland. Services include: Health Information Line A free information and referral service for Queensland women 3839 9988 1800 017 676 (toll free outside Brisbane) email via www.womhealth.org.au Staffed by nurse/midwives Health information via www.womhealth.org.au including Health Journey publication, factsheets and articles on topics such as contraception, endometriosis, menopause, depression, sexual health, incontinence, pregnancy and much more. Health education for the community and health professionals delivered via seminars, talks, videoconferencing and videostreaming. Free lending library via www.womhealth.org.au Story It was a Saturday. Staff and MC had come together to draft the strategic plan for the next 3 years. Several management committee members had lots of good ideas about women’s health issues we thought were worthy of “our” attention. Who was going to respond to them? Would it be instead of something else? What would go? What would the response involve? How would we chose one “good idea” over another
- four (4) positions within the centre undertake advocacy – the manager, the health promotion officer, the health information officer and the information system officer; the activities undertaken within each of the positions is relevant to that positions. For example, the information systems officer promoted the innovative use of technology and manager addressed fora about women’s health policy; most activities focused on women’s health such as abortion and cervical cancer rather than a broader “social model” definition of health; activities included letters to magazines read by the general public (newspaper, Marie Claire); attendance at public rallies; membership of committees; submissions to policy consultations and; a web presence. the goals of activities included raising public awareness; better health services for women; policies that respond to the health needs of women; promotion of the services of Women’s Health; activities targeted local (north Brisbane), Queensland wide and Australian women; and specific population groups were targeted by joining existing committees addressing particular issues in relation to that population group.
- We reviewed management, health promotion and social justice literature for definitions of advocacy. ‘Advocacy for health is a combination of individual and social actions designed to gain political commitment, policy support, social acceptance and systems support for a particular health goal or programme.’ (Nutbeam) ‘The promotion of a specific message and / or course of action in order to influence or contribute to the development and implementation of public policies which will alleviate the causes and consequences of [a particular issue/condition] What is advocacy? Social actions designed to gain: political commitment policy support social acceptance and systems support for women’s health
- Philosophical framework that guides advocacy in Women’s Health? Is it feminism, health promotion and/ or good management ? Current strategic women’s health issues. What does “current and strategic” mean in this context? Is it that the issues are named in the NWHP? Is it currently in the media? Is it that other women’s organisations are pushing for change around the specific issue and want support? Will it bring Women’s Health the profile we want in the media? Context of other women’s services. Can we agree to support their campaigns rather than initiate our own in their areas of expertise? What are the issue we need to lead in, in relation to advocacy? What are the “core business” issues we should be seen to be responding to? The social model of health means that any issue could be seen to be impacting on women’s health. Women’s Health do not have the expertise or the resource capacity to respond to this breadth of issues. Should we prioritise specific women’s health issues about which we feel qualified and resourced to respond? Should we then build a resource base and a profile in the community as reliable informants and advocates in these specific areas? Are there specific population groups we might want to develop partnerships with? Are we clear about the goals we want to set and are they achievable? How do we know that what we did made a difference? A difference to whom?? Due to the limitation of resources, the service has been unable to sustain campaigns cumulatively and as such, the service has focused on different issues at different times. This has meant that networks that have been established for the purposes of one campaign may not be relevant to other campaigns. Advocacy needs to support the sustainability of Women’s Health rather than undermine it. Do we have the skill and information resource base to ensure we have capacity for specific campaigns? Provocative advocacy but maintain name and not undermine funding. At a strategic level the challenge we faced was how to choose the issue/s to advocate for. From a philosophical framework perspective should our advocacy be guided by feminism, health promotion and/ or good management? How do we identify if an issue is ‘current or strategic’ . Does this mean that it is named in the NWHP, that it is currently in the media, that other women’s organisations are asking us to support or because government’s have asked for submissions to policy papers? How do we manage those issues that a member of the MC or staff have a particular passion for? At an operational level the challenges were: What is ‘core business’. We work from a social model of health, we are a statewide service therefore any issue could be seen as impacting on women’s health. We have finite resource capacity. If we choose to advocate on this issue, what don’t we do? How do we know that what we say represents the organisation's views and not our individual views, whose responsibility is it to implement the various advocacy strategies? We haven’t been clear about what we want to achieve from advocacy, how we report what we do and how we know when we have achieved it. We need to consider if provocative advocacy could affect our ‘name’ or undermine our funding. Advocacy needs to support the sustainability of our organisation rather than undermine it.
- The Quick MBA 2005 The model has 5 stages. They are: mission and objectives; environmental scan; strategy formulation; strategy implementation and evaluation and control. Mintzberg et al (1998) present a model that expands the environmental scan to a SWOT analysis in which the internal environment of the organisation is assessed for its strengths and weaknesses to identify core competencies and the external environment is assessed for its opportunities and threats to ascertain critical success factors. In relation to advocacy, this translates into identifying women’s health issues that currently threaten the health of women (such as a change in government policy or perception of public attitude) and/ or opportunities that might improve the health of women (such as a proposed campaign or engagement of other stakeholders in willingness to participate in campaign). In this model, the choice of which advocacy project to select is based on “feasibility (do we have the core competencies to be able to achieve something?), acceptability (to stakeholders) and suitability (as related to the context of the opportunities and threats in the external environment) Bryson (2004a) describes 7 steps in strategic planning: Getting ready; Articulating mission and vision; Assessing the environment; Agreeing priorities (The instructions for doing so are: analyse interplay between SWOT; analyse competitive strengths of programs; chose criteria for use in setting priorities; select future core strategies; summarise the scope and scale of the programs and; write strategic goals and strategic objectives) Writing the strategic plan Implementing the strategic plan Monitoring and evaluating INTERNAL Strengths Adequate resources Skills Well thought of by clients Cost advantage Product/ service innovation abilities Proven management Acknowledged market leader Access to economies of scale Barriers to entry Diverse and skilled workforce Weaknesses No clear strategic direction Obsolete facilities Lack of management depth or talent Absence of key skills or competencies Too narrow product or service line Insufficient resources Poor knowledge of competitors EXTERNAL Opportunities Serve additional client groups Enter new markets or segments Expand product/ service line to meet broader range of client needs Diversify into related products or services Adopt new technology Threats Political instability globally Change of government New minister Rising demands fir substitute products or services Changing needs of client group Government policy decisions Growing competitive pressures Technology obsolescence Reduction in appropriations
- This process has 2 phases to it. The first is related to the issue we started with – how to prepare for and deal with the good ideas that flow around strategic planning. Some of this is in the preparation - the environmental scan and the analysis of trends in activities of the organisation over the past 3 years. The rest is about offering something that can make a difference. There are 3 key questions – which women’s health issues are more relevant for us to speak up about We would aim to answer yes to most of the ”which issues” questions. We need to have a lot to say to answer the rest of the questions … if we do, these issues would be included in the 3 yearly strategic plan The outcome is a list of issues / roles that we agree to prioritise in the strategic planning cycle. Each issue is then considered in realtion to the next step ..
- Level 1 consolidates the discussion from the strategic plan in relation to this specific issue Levels 2 and 3 are about specific plans for the internal management of advocacy activities Ideally we need to be able see that we can plan like this for each issue at strategic planning. Of course, we recognise that it may take some juggling to do so.