Category Archives: Grassroots Public Health
Grassroots Public Health: Q&A with Shannon Frattaroli
Shannon Frattaroli, PhD, Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Injury Research and Policy
NewPublicHealth is partnering with Grassroots Change: Connecting for Better Health to share interviews, tools, and other resources on grassroots public health. The project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Group supports grassroots leaders as they build and sustain public health movements at the local, state and national levels.
In this Q&A, conducted by Grassroots Change, Shannon Frattaroli, PhD, Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Injury Research and Policy, shares her perspective on grassroots power and the future of public health. Her research helps answer two critical questions: Why are grassroots movements so important; and what is a public health movement, anyway?
>> Frattaroli’s interview has been edited for NewPublicHealth. View the full interview at GrassrootsChange.net.
Grassroots Change: What do you see as the role of grassroots movements in public health?
Shannon Frattaroli: There’s tremendous potential. Public health at its core is about the public. The public should have a voice in public health, and grassroots movements are one way for that to happen. The public has been very engaged in policy issues or problems throughout the history of public health. When people get engaged and are strategic with regard to policy change, things can happen quickly. And change can happen in a way that feels more legitimate. I think it’s where we should be moving in the future.
GC: What does “grassroots movement” mean? How are grassroots health movements different from other types of advocacy?
Grassroots Public Health: Q&A with Jill Birnbaum, American Heart Association
Jill Birnbaum, American Heart Association
Jill Birnbaum is an advocate for nutrition policy, tobacco control, and health care reform who has worked at the federal, state, and local levels. Her work began in Minnesota, and she now oversees state advocacy for the American Heart Association. Her grassroots experience, combined with her national role, gives her unique insights into public health policy at all levels of government.
This is the first in a two-part interview conducted by Grassroots Change: Connecting for Better Health, a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Group. In part one, Jill shares her perspective on grassroots movements and the threat of preemption in the obesity prevention arena. Preemption can take away the ability of states and local communities to adopt innovative solutions to their own public health problems in a way that responds to each community’s unique needs.
>>View the original posting of this interview over at GrassrootsChange.net.
>>Read more on preemption and grassroots movement building.
Grassroots Change: What do you see as the impact of preemption in public health, especially in obesity prevention?
Jill Birnbaum: [Preemption] slows or even ends grassroots movements before they begin. It also drains our resources for future advocacy efforts. We leave it to the next generation of public health advocates to undo policy compromises that we make today. We’re still seeing that in a few states with tobacco, and anticipating the fights both at the federal and state levels that we might have to undo someday [in obesity prevention].
Preemption stifles innovation, and it also makes some assumptions that can be wrong. It assumes that we know everything today and that there’s nothing more that we have to learn tomorrow. That’s especially true in nutrition policy where science continues to evolve and policy needs to evolve along with the science.
Preemption also has the effect of dividing the [public health] community when a small group of people, in some cases even a single individual or organization, negotiates away something that other people really want.
GC: Are the concerns about preemption in obesity prevention mostly about nutrition policy? There doesn’t seem to be a major effort to preempt local physical activity policies.
