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What Health Advocacy Is, What It Isn’t, and Why Most of It Can’t Be Taught
One of the websites offered by APHA is a listing of all advocacy educational programs (that we know about). There are programs offered by colleges and universities, private programs, organizational programs, mentors, and more. Some require in-person attendance, some are offered online. Their quality varies, and their results vary…. Often I hear from someone who tells me they have looked over the available programs, but can’t find what they need. What they are looking for doesn’t seem to exist. Or, here is what they want to learn, and will I tell them whether such-and-such a program will teach them that? Typically what they want to know boils down to this: Which program will give them the formula for success? Which one will provide the protocols, and the processes, and the check-off list of things to do? Which one is the magic, silver bullet that will shift them from employment today, to successful self-employment as an advocate tomorrow? To which I answer: ALL of them. And NONE of them. Here is the problem: for most of those who ask, they really don’t get what independent advocacy is. They have this idea in their heads that it’s that magical world where they will get to be the advocates they want to be – because they are. “I’ve been an advocate all my life; now I just want to get paid for it,” they tell me. “My hospital won’t let me tell patients what they really need to know, so if I do this on my own, I can change that.” Or other variations on those themes. Here’s the point I think they are missing: there is no formula for success. There’s no formula for 80% of the work advocates do. Unlike nursing or medical school, or social work education, or other career-focused professional coursework where tried and true processes and procedures are studied, then practiced, then applied in workplaces, advocacy is about creativity, or assertiveness, or alternatives to those processes . The entire essence of independent advocacy is that we are breaking ‘the rules.’ Or, as I phrased it to one emailer…