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Who Are We To Advocate? Opening keynote address presented by Norm Constantine to the California Alliance Concerned With School-Aged Parenting and Pregnancy Prevention (CACSAP) annual conference, Sacramento, CA, November 6, 2003. download slides I was asked to talk this morning about advocacy. To do this, I had to think a bit: just what exactly is advocacy? The dictionary tells us that advocacy is the act of pleading in favor of a cause or policy. But who are we to advocate? Are we trouble makers and rabble rousers? Are we citizens participating in our democracy? Are we movers forward of society, in some large or small way, to make lives better? All of the above, I hope. Yes, there are those who want us not to advocate. But once we passionately embrace a worthy cause, we cannot help but advocate. We may be tentative or direct in our advocacy, we may be angry or serene, we might be more or less effective, but advocate we must. Let me tell you a story about a 14-year old rabble rouser I know. You all know about 14 year old rabble rousers, I suspect. Well, last month, during her second week of high school, in freshman history class, this young lady was assigned to do a poster on a significant world problem. I was able to do a brief interview at the time. Allow me to read for a moment from the transcript: "So why did you chose 'overpopulation' for your poster assignment?" I asked. Because I reviewed all the problems we had to chose from and I thought all the others were either less significant or could be traced back to overpopulation, she answered. "I see. How did you decide to include condoms on your poster?" I wondered. I thought that condoms are an important part of the solution, and they will get people's attention, and will make people more likely to think about this problem. "Aha. But what if this causes a ruckus, and you get in trouble during just your second week of school?" She answered: If my teacher tried to make trouble about it, I would say, 'Excuse me? Didn't you give me this assignment? Aren't condoms an important part of the solution to this problem?' "Okay. And what if your teacher is very negative about condoms and just doesn't hear you and tells you to remove the condoms or you will get an F?" (…there was a pause …) I would remove the condoms … and then come back after school to talk to the teacher! At this point I felt I had done my parental duty, and that she properly understood the potential risks, so the condoms stayed on, and the poster went to school. The next week, during parent's night, I was proud to see her poster, condoms and all, prominently displayed on the classroom wall! This young lady is an advocate. She has causes, passion, audacity, and is developing her skills to advocate more effectively. The same, I believe, is true for every one of us in this room. Now I'd like to share with you a story about another type of advocacy. Most of you already are familiar -- I hope -- with the No Time for Complacency study. There's a copy of the executive summary in the conference package, and this summary also provides web links to the full report and various supporting materials. This study provided the basis for a very successful statewide advocacy campaign. Let's call it evidence-based policy advocacy. [SLIDE 1]. There are other ways to approach advocacy, yet we can find here an illustration of several powerful principles of effective advocacy that I want to share with everyone. The No Time for Complacency team used these principles in ways that might be different than how you would best apply them in your own advocacy work, however these principles can help all of us advocate more effectively. First of all, we started with a goal. [2]. A goal derives from a cause, but is more specific and focused. Our cause was social betterment for youth. This is a cause shared by all of us here today, of course. Our goal was to protect and enhance state-level teen pregnancy prevention policy and funding in California. We were very clear and very focused on this goal. One especially salient aspect of this goal was money [3] - to protect funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs. Then we developed our message. [4]. Our message can be summarized as "no time for complacency." [5]. This message has three parts, so it was a fairly complex message and this was challenging to work with. The first part of this message is that we have been doing something right in California. [6]. This graph shows the dramatic decline in California's teen birth rate during the last decade. Wow, this sure looks impressive, but many people know that California is not unique in reducing it's teen birth rate during the last decade. So a comparison better communicates this part of the message. [7]. We see here that California's decline has been much more dramatic than the national decline. In fact, California experienced the largest decline of all 50 states. So yes, we must have been doing something right in California. The second part of the message is that we need to do more. [8]. A comparison of California's rates to rates for the U.S. and for other industrialized countries vividly illustrates to need to do more - for all of the US, California included. And finally, the last part is that if we don't do more, there will be real consequences. [9]. This chart shows actual numbers of teen births for the last decade, on the left, and California Department of Finance projections for the next decade, on the right. If these projections are accurate, and indeed they appear to be conservative, we can see that we are at the bottom of a V-shaped curve. Due to demographic shifts and other factors, all the remarkable progress of the last decade is about to be reversed. Altogether, this is the No Time for Complacency message. [10]. ... [11]. It's a very powerful message, but the message alone is not enough. Our message needed to be framed. [12]. This is a critically important step [13], that cannot be neglected. Frames are mental models that people use to interpret information, largely at an unconscious level. Research in cognitive psychology has established that new facts and other information are interpreted, or misinterpreted, as necessary to fit existing frames. Often as advocates we must try to reframe an issue rather than to merely provide new facts. We tried to frame our No Time for Complacency message in two ways: first, in terms of high yielding investments in effective programs [14], by bringing in dollar figures; and second, by highlighting the local relevance of the teen birth issue [15], by summarizing and publicizing birth rates and costs at the legislative district levels. We also tried very hard to avoid commonly held frames of irresponsible youth. [16; NCPTP scarlet letter ads]. … Yes, we all know these frames, and we've seen these unfortunate ads from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. This was a challenging balance to maintain. [17]. How can we get attention focused on the problem, without exaggerating or sensationalizing the problem and without reinforcing harmful negative stereotypes about adolescents? This was our biggest challenge of the entire effort. Inevitably, we did not always succeed. For example, one state senator, a strong supporter, wrote: "Our district faces many challenges. Unemployment, lack of health insurance, and low graduation, to name a few. All of these issues can be traced to one problem: teenage pregnancy." [18]. Not the kind of framing we want, but once we opened the taxpayer-costs can of worms, it elicits this type of frame for many, if not most, adults. An excellent article about frames and reframing is by Frank Gilliam and Susan Bales. It's titled Reframing America's Youth. [19]. Yes, Reframing America's Youth. [20; Planned Parenthood valuable youth ads]. This, I believe, is the most important thing we need to do to be able to succeed in every other aspect of our work. Everyone please read this fascinating article on reframing. You can get it off the web, the link is listed in the handout. It discusses frames as they relate to public perceptions of youth and youth issues, the destructive power of negative frames, and how advocates can use framing and reframing to get their positive message across. ... Reframing America's Youth. Now, to support our well-framed message, we developed arguments, using evidence based on research and data. [21 ]. … [22]. With due caution and integrity. This is always tricky, we want to make the best case we can for our argument, but we don't want to misuse data or falsely interpret research. And most research results are ambiguous. We will go into this area in more depth at my workshop this afternoon on appraising program effectiveness claims. Throughout the campaign, we kept our focus on our ultimate audience, who could deliver on our goal. [23]. These were state legislators, and specifically targeted were state senators. [24]. We extensively used media [25], with the help of a fantastic media relations firm: Brown-Miller Communications. [26]. If in your own advocacy you can't afford a media relations firm, there are excellent books that lay out the essentials of an effective media strategy for advocates. One very good one is News for a Change : An Advocate's Guide to Working with the Media, by the Berkeley Media Studies Group, listed in the handout. [27]. Our use of media involved working directly with individual newspaper reporters to ensure wide coverage at the start of our campaign in virtually every newspaper market in California. We ended up in more than 20 newspaper articles [28], almost all written around a local connection to the message. This helped get individual legislators' attention focused on our issue. We also sought and embraced partners. [29]. We worked with partners at both the local and state levels. Our local community partners around the state were key to doing grass roots level advocacy within their own legislative districts. They talked about our message with reporters for the newspaper stories in their districts, and contacted their legislators to help them in addressing the issue. We provided media training and other support for our local partners. We also worked with state partners, including several legislators' offices and caucuses, and several statewide advocacy groups such as Planned Parenthood, Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE), and CACSAP. There were other partners we worked with quietly behind the scenes. And finally [30], we celebrated success! [31]. We had to make a conscious effort to take the time to do so, but this helps recharge the batteries for the next phase, and should never be neglected. So these are the principles we used to advocate, these powerful universal principles that are available to all [32]. Goal, message, frame, evidence, audience, media, partners, and celebration. And we had remarkable success: We successfully focused attention and reframed the discussion and debate on this issue at both local and statewide policy levels. [33]. Our positive effect on statewide policy went beyond what we had ever expected, four legislative bills relied on our study and related testimony, including the California Comprehensive Sexual Health and HIV Prevention Education Act, SB-71, which is now the law. [34]. And finally, the money. [35]. In the midst of the California state budget meltdown, all Office of Family Planning adolescent pregnancy prevention funding except for the media campaign was saved, approximately $27 million. Family Pact funding was continued at approximately $380 million combined federal and state matching funds - of which about 21 percent is used to serve adolescents. Other funding for teen parenting and secondary prevention programs was continued at 93% of previous levels, including $21 million for AFLP funding. The No Time for Complacency advocacy campaign has been widely credited as a key factor in these funding successes. [slides off]. But our work is not done, and neither is yours. No one needs to be reminded that we have challenging times ahead. We all must continue to advocate. We need to work together, we need to involve students and parents and other community members in our advocacy. And we must learn how to advocate more effectively. For the next two days CACSAP provides us with a powerful package of workshops and other resources that we can use to develop our advocacy skills and increase our effectiveness, beginning right now. Please make the most of this magnificent conference. Thank you all for being here. |