Creation of Advocacy Group. The primary goal of public health is the protection and promotion of the public’s health. Typically, research, surveillance, policies, and programs in public health are focused on the patterns and factors associated with understanding and improving the health of target populations. These factors go beyond health care to include social, economic, political, and physical environmental conditions which affect people’s health (Xxxxxxx & Reischmann, 2004). Historically, many public health interventions required little inherent necessity for community building and capacity, such as the development of water and sanitation or addressing outbreaks of immunization-preventable diseases (Xxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, 2004). Mass media and the formal public health system were sufficient to address these health problems. However, many of today’s problems, particularly those causing large health disparities in marginalized communities, have complex causation and require similarly complex and long-term interventions (Xxxxxxx & Reischmann, 2004). The lack of a community advocacy organization to organize and mobilize the community around the creation and expansion of community-based resources for individuals in mental and behavioral health crisis in Rapides Parish is one of the most critical missing pieces. To address this public health problem, many of the community health interventions discussed must include a strategy that also focuses on building a coalition of public health practitioners, community leaders, mental health advocates, and volunteers. Improving public health often involves policy changes that are the result of complex advocacy efforts (Xxxxx, Eyler, Dodson, & Xxxxxxxx, 2014). However, as public health practitioners, little emphasis is placed on the critical role of advocacy in translating research and evidence into policy, practice, and change in public opinion (Xxxxxxx, 2001). Everyone involved in public health, social services and direct health care in central Louisiana understands the problem, but little has been done to mobilize the community-at-large to create change. In Rapides Parish, the approach to crisis services must be forward-looking rather than merely reactive, with success seen as the ability of the population served to return to a stable life in the community. Rather than simply trying to increase the number of beds available for an individual in mental health crisis, the goal must be preventative care and a reduction in the number of crises that o...
