Advocacy

Accomplishments

To change how the public and decision-makers think about the value of public health and to be a leading voice in framing health as a human right, we proposed to 1) prioritize our role as an honest and nonpartisan broker of public health information and find new and compelling ways to communicate the impact of our work with a focus on showing how the science and practice of public health impact lives every day; and 2) convene inclusive and open discourse about major public health issues that can inform our science and boost our efforts to advocate for evidence-informed solutions that will make a difference.  

 

Be a trusted broker of public health information and communicate the impact of our work to inform the translation of the science into programs and policy 

  • Josh Sharfstein doing a webcast
    Elevated the role of communications in the School. We hired the first Associate Dean for Communications and Marketing and supported the growth of the team and investment in new products and initiatives. Under this new leadership, the Communications team has won three national awards and grown the School’s audience on every platform. 
  • Expanded and elevated the ways we share our public health expertise and recommendations, including more frequent webcasts and briefings for media. Our faculty experts appear weekly on Bloomberg News TV and Radio to share insights and findings on timely public health topics. Our media placements in 2020 exceeded 4,300, up 437% compared to 2019. The Communications team also expanded our native social media content to share public health expertise in highly visual, accessible, and even humorous ways. Facebook likes have grown by 258% and Instagram followers by 753% since 2019, totaling nearly 1 million followers across all platforms.  
     
  • Launched new digital products to reach target audiences with public health information and answers to their public health questions. This includes the launch of the Expert Insights newsletter, the Public Health On Call podcast, and a new stream of informative articles on our redesigned flagship website. The Expert Insights newsletter now has more than 82,000 subscribers, the podcast has more than 6.5 million downloads, and our website attracted more than 7 million visitors in 2020 and more than 9.2 million in 2021. 
     
  • Hosted Spotlight Series events featuring alumni working on critical public health issues such as health equity, COVID-19, mental health, and violence prevention.  
     
  • Leveraged the attention that public health and the University have received in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our experts were leading contributors to the global COVID-19 response and the University’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Our content experts have been widely sought after for insights into the pandemic and its impact.  
     
  • Appointed a journalist-in-residence with support from the Commonwealth Fund. The journalist, appointed by the Department of Health Policy and Management, is teaching students about the changing role of the media in public health. 
     
  • Continued to cosponsor the Association of Health Care Journalists’ annual conference to educate journalists on covering health-related topics.  

 

Boost our efforts to advocate for evidence-informed solutions that will make a difference 

  • Faculty testifying
    Recruited the inaugural Deans Sommer and Klag Professor of the Practice in Public Health Advocacy to lead the Center for Public Health Advocacy. 
  • Developed a new five-year plan for the Center for Public Health Advocacy. Under the leadership of the new director, the plan will guide its mission-focused efforts to “advance the art and science of effective evidence-based public health advocacy through excellence in teaching, translation, and taking high-impact, high-profile action.” 
     
  • Secured major philanthropic gifts to support the expanded role of the Center for Public Health Advocacy. The first gift from Sidney and Helaine Lerner provided an endowment to support the Professor of the Practice. Additional five-year funding from Helaine Lerner supported the strategic merger of the Lerner Center for Health Promotion and the Center for Public Health Advocacy—to be renamed the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy—to become the epicenter of education in public health advocacy and foster a culture of advocacy. Additional funding from the Bloomberg Philanthropies provided endowment for the Center to support educational and training activities that will benefit the Bloomberg American Health Initiative and the broader advocacy mission of the School.  
     
  • Secured endowment for the Dana Feitler Professor of the Practice in Gun Violence Prevention and Advocacy through generous support from the family of Dana Feitler, a young woman committed to social good who was killed in an armed robbery in 1989. 
     
  • Founded a Stand with Public Health coalition, with more than 20 national organizations advocating for greater public investment in public health infrastructure and support for public health officials against threats, harassment, and rollback of public health authority through congressional testimony, media appearances, webcasts, reports, publications, and a call-to- action website.  

 

Read ABOUT OUR ONGOING PRIORITIES