Environmental strategies, such as policy change, focus on changing the environments that shape individual behavior. The goal is to make the healthy choice the easy choice. Policy change also provides a greater opportunity to address health disparities. This guidebook will help you and your coalition make sense of the policy process by breaking it down step-by-step.

Learn the definitions of advocacy and lobbying, along with the examples of each when it comes to working in prevention.

Review this powerpoint by Sandra Puerini Del Sesto to define advocacy and lobbying, describe what a prevention professional’s ethical obligation to advocacy is, distinguish acts of advocacy and lobbying, and list the advocacy guidelines for actions that promote wellness and prevent substance misuse and related behavioral health problems!

Alcohol policy is often the product of competing interests, values and ideologies, with the evidence suggesting that the conflicting interests between profit and health mean that working in partnership with the alcohol industry is likely to lead to ineffective policy. Opportunities for implementation of evidence-based alcohol policies that better serve the public good are clearer than ever before as a result of accumulating knowledge on which strategies work best.

Coalition leaders across Michigan share “shout outs” or 5 minute updates on what their coalition is working on.

The monitoring of alcohol use is a key focus of public health surveillance efforts to better understand the relationship between alcohol use, particularly excessive use, and its harmful effects. This session will describe five alcohol indicators included in Substance Abuse and Mental Health Surveillance Indicators adopted by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists in 2016.

How many times have you seen (or given!) a presentation where the audience’s eyes glazed over with boredom or exhaustion? How do we communicate ideas that are important to us in a way that’s meaningful to our audiences? Can we make complex science and deep data meaningful to non-expert audiences? Interestingly, directorial and editing techniques that have long been used in movies correspond with some of the best practices derived from cognitive research about how we can engage our audiences in the delivery of our ideas. This multidisciplinary talk looks at how we can create highly engaging and impactful presentations for our community, project, and funding partners by utilizing these techniques.

Recognizing the Social Determinants of Health in a community, embracing the faults, and leveraging community partners to better suit the community you serve. Helping the community have better access to programs and services in a community by creating long-lasting relationships between service providers and the coalition.

Join us for a presentation conducted by coalition leaders across Michigan highlighting the work of youth throughout the state. Topics will include youth engagement strategies, such as a regional Photovoice project and a youth-developed media campaign. Coalition leaders will describe successes, challenges, and will provide opportunities for templates and resource sharing.

Sustaining a coalition past the 10-year mark comes with unique challenges and weathering the cyclical nature of the work can at time feel defeating. This workshop will provide an overview of how coalition leaders and staff can and should hold the vision of community change for coalitions and use that vision to engage and re-engage partners. The workshop will consider how to determine what to sustain in coalitions and how to identify the next steps for coalition strategy implementation. The workshop will also review the balance between coalition strategy implementation and prevention programming as a way to create collective action. Participants will leave being able to identify at least one step they can take in sustaining and integrating their coalition work.

Use this sample flyer when encouraging schools to participate in MiPHY. This resource highlights the benefits for schools to opt into this data collection tool

Listen in to discover what MiPHY is, the resources available, what data the survey is collecting and how the data is being utilized. Further understand how Organizations and School Districts are involved when taking the survey.