Welcome to the Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy
Training leaders as effective advocates for solving the world's greatest public health challenges.
What is Advocacy?
We define advocacy as strategic actions taken to drive social, organizational, or policy change on behalf of particular health goals or population health. This encompasses a range of disciplines and practices that effectively engage and inform policymakers, media, and the public to act and embrace evidence-based solutions for public health challenges.
Policy is one of the most powerful tools for ensuring that everyone can have the fairest, most equitable opportunity for a healthy, prosperous life and environment. We will enhance the knowledge and skills of public health professionals to effectively translate the science, engage with decisionmakers, build political support and will, and use data to effectively drive change.
Public health advocacy has the power to improve all lives through evidence-based action.
What's New
$40k Sommer Klag Advocacy Impact Awards
The Lerner Center for Public Health Advocacy is now accepting submissions for two $40,000 Advocacy Impact Awards. The self-submission period is open through Thursday, September 14, 2023.
New field guide for advocacy
Shelley Hearne, director of the Lerner Center, Keshia Pollack Porter, chair of the Department of Health Management and Practice, and Katrina Forrest, Bloomberg School associate faculty, co-authored a comprehensive field guide, Policy Engagement, to equip public health professionals with essential skills for engaging in the policy process.
Video: How to Deliver Effective Testimony
The Lerner Center developed a new video with tips on delivering effective testimony.
The Power of Advocacy
If we want demonstrable improvements in the public’s health, we need to intervene in the larger political and social arena and more fully engage in advocacy to inform decision making in our society.
— Ellen J. MacKenzie PhD ’79, MSc ’75, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Dean, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
