Building Capacity for Health Promotion Advocacy
Having an advocacy plan is important to the long-term success of an organization. For health promoting effort , substantial advocacy plan helps influence key decision makers to support health interventions and to invest their busy time and allocate funding to ensure Cambodian people have the resources and information they need to live healthy lives and achieve their wellness goals.
PSI/Cambodia’s Country Director Socheat Chi, who led a workshop on “Advocacy Strategy” for health promoting professionals, said that advocacy is not public relations or marketing. “Advocacy is behavior change communication for decision makers,” she put it simply. The two-day workshop was organized by Population Services International (PSI/Cambodia) as part of Promoting Healthy Behavior (PHB) project and was held from on June 23-24, 2020. Participants are representatives from both government and NGO partners including Battambong and Kampong Chhnang Provincial Health Promotion Units (PHPU), National Centre for Health Promotion (NCHP), Partners in Compassion (PC) and The Action for Health Development (AHEAD).
The participants were encouraged to think about what they want to achieve in the long term and who can help their goals become a reality while also provided with an opportunity to discuss and get feedback on key factors affecting their advocacy efforts such as staffing, budget, timing, etc. The workshop also introduced them to Advocacy Smart Chart, a six-step advocacy planning tool developed to help them streamline their plan by making sure their message and audience choices are consistent and the strategy is doable.
Among the 10 participants hailing from Battambong, Kampong Chhnang and Phnom Penh was Ms. Madet Van, Chief of Health Promoting Unit of Battambong Provincial Department of Health, who attended the workshop on the topic for the first time. “This workshop is important in improving the activities of Health Promoting Unit and gaining broader support from leadership,” she said.
With positive feedback from participants, PHB is planning to make the workshop available for health partners in other provinces under PHB coverage.
Promoting Healthy Behaviors (PHB) is a five-year, USAID-funded, social and behavior change project (2018-2023) being directly implemented by Population Services International (PSI). The goal of PHB is to improve health behaviors among Cambodians and ensure they seek and receive quality healthcare with decreased financial hardship. PHB targets 6 key health areas: maternal & child health; nutrition; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); tuberculosis; family planning; and malaria. PHB is working with partners in Phnom Penh, Kampong Chhnang, Kampong Cham, Tbong Khmum, Battambang, and Pailin.
