Advocacy and health equity

Advocacy is a critical population health strategy that emphasizes collective action to effect systemic change. It focuses on changing upstream factors related to the social determinants of health, and explicitly recognizes the importance of engaging in political processes to effect desired policy changes at organizational and system levels. Advocacy influences decision-making to create positive change for people and their environments. Advocacy is one of three basic health promotion actions identified in the Ottawa Charter and one of four public health roles to improve health equity. It has been an important part of many public health achievements over the past 100 years and is a core competency of Canadian public health practice. The purpose of this publication is to highlight the importance of advocacy as a strategy and practice within public health, and to describe the different roles the public health sector can play in doing advocacy to address the social determinants of health (SDH) and improve health equity. (author introduction) #P4HEwebinarFebruary2024