The WSO Advocacy Toolkit is for individuals who seek to advance stroke policy, elevate the issue of stroke in his/her community and improve stroke outcomes by driving advocacy and change through governments and institutions.
This toolkit will help you advocate for improvements in the health system to address stroke (e.g. gain more funding for stroke units, improve the use of best practice guidelines, ensure better access to stroke treatments, rehabilitation services) in your region.
Please visit www.worldstrokecampaign.org to download the Advocacy Toolkit.
Examples of advocacy around stroke include:
- advocating for a government strategy to address stroke in your country; or
- collecting and reporting on stroke data to show local health authorities that there is a need for new stroke services.
Advocacy is different to awareness raising, although you may need to raise awareness of a problem to strengthen your advocacy efforts.
This toolkit focuses on advocacy because making a change in the system benefits everyone affected, and provides a longer-term solution. In other words, systems advocacy is about fixing things, for everyone, once and for all.
Advocacy is about more than just presenting facts and evidence to decision-makers. We need to understand why decision-makers may not want to make the changes we are asking for, and then work to persuade them.
For this reason, the WSO created a 9 step Advocacy Plan, covering all necessary steps:
Step 1 – What do we want?
Step 2 – Who can give it to us?
Step 3 – What do they need to hear?
Step 4 – Who do they need to hear it from?
Step 5 – How do we get them to hear it?
Step 6 – What have we got?
Step 7 – What do we need to develop?
Step 8 – How do we begin?
Step 9 – How will we know it’s working, or not
Do you have a stroke Advocacy Example you would like to share?
In 2017, the World Stroke Organization will be collating Advocacy Plans from around the world which can be used as examples / case studies to assist others in their stroke advocacy initiatives.
These Plans will be developed into an interactive map searchable by country and topic.
If you have an Advocacy Plan you would like to share please contact campaigns@world-stroke.org.
