539 - Evaluation of a Community Partnership Advocacy Curriculum
Sunday, April 30, 2023
3:30 PM – 6:00 PM ET
Poster Number: 539 Publication Number: 539.324
Elizabeth Hovel, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States; Suzanne DiBattista, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, United States; Margeaux Naughton, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, United States; Julie Sturza, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
Adolescent Medicine Fellow Medical College of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Background: Pediatricians have the potential for tremendous impact in advocacy for children, and pediatricians’ role as advocates is well supported by the AAP. Child advocacy training is a requirement of pediatric residencies, but limited guidelines and curricula are available. We designed a novel community partnership driven advocacy curriculum to meet this need. Objective: Assess whether a novel community-partnership driven advocacy curriculum improves pediatric resident comfort in working with community organizations and exercising advocacy skills. Design/Methods: This was a prospective pre- and post-intervention study evaluating a pilot community-based advocacy curriculum for pediatric residents (N= 31) at an academic children’s hospital. Our curriculum included self-directed exploration of an online bank of resources relating to local youth justice reform, legislative advocacy, social media advocacy, and op-ed writing followed by meetings with a local nonprofit youth justice advocacy organization to learn about the youth justice system and exercise concrete advocacy skills. Residents were surveyed before and after curriculum participation to assess comfort in advocacy-related skills and attitudes using Likert-type 5-point scales (1 (extremely uncomfortable) to 5 (extremely comfortable)). Unique identifiers linked survey responses and paired t-tests or McNemar tests were used to assess change. Results: Residents reported increased comfort in working with community organizations (p=0.0004). Reported comfort in legislative advocacy, social media advocacy, and writing op-eds also significantly increased (p< 0.0001) (Figure 1). Comfort in highlighting disparities while advocating for children increased, though the change was not significant (p = 0.06). Awareness of local youth justice reform more than doubled on a 5-point scale (1.5 to 3.3, p < 0.0001). Lack of knowledge as a barrier to advocacy decreased from 53% to 10% (p = 0.0005), but lack of time remained a barrier (73% vs 87%).
Conclusion(s): This novel curriculum integrated self directed online advocacy training modules with a community partner-driven advocacy project to teach pediatric residents tangible advocacy skills. It was easily embedded into an existing community health rotation. After participating in this curriculum, residents’ comfort with advocacy, working with community organizations, and exercising advocacy skills all increased significantly. Additionally, fewer residents cited lack of knowledge on how to advocate as a barrier to advocacy. This study showed a promising role for community partnership-driven advocacy curricula.
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