The 1, 2, and 3 of Policy Engagement: How To Stay Current With Limited Resources

This month, like many others around the world, I will be returning to school.  This time, as Adjunct Lecturer for my graduate alma mater, teaching two courses: Introduction to Public Health and Health Care Policy in the US. The goal of my courses is simple: to help inform the next generation of public health practitioners about what information is out there, how to understand it, and when to (appropriately) challenge it.

This will be my second time teaching health policy. And though that may not be a vast amount of experience, I have still come to understand a couple of truths (about policy in general) from my students:

1. Reading policy and being able to dissect policy language is something very few ever consider as relevant to their career trajectories;
2. There is a general apathy to the policy process, given the oversimplified understanding of the process as being “done by our elected officials” and therefore not able to be impacted by Joe/Josephine Citizen; and
3. Policy is complicated.

To truth #3, I say, “Yes, yes policy is complicated.” Why? An easy (and wrong) response would be to blame it solely on policy jargon, or the technocratic framework of the lawyers and wonks who write the policy. Policy is complicated because politics (the art of the compromise – and rubbing along without – hopefully – killing each other) is complicated. Politics mostly. (But, also, because policy is generally an adapted version of existing legislation, not a clean, brand new piece of writing.)

However, I challenge the assumptions and grumbling complacency of #1 and #2. First, policy impacts every career trajectory, and the ability to understand and navigate regulations can be a real differentiator between employees or candidates. Secondly, it is the role of all of us, in this experiment of representative government, to actively participate in the “sausage-making” process of policy. I do, however, observe that we regularly fail to support our public health practitioners with learning how and when to engage with policy. This results from not requiring students to take policy courses, and in busying our practitioners with audits such that they can’t afford time to take a step back and think about what could change to improve services. I, myself, am an outcome of this lack of support – for years I believed only those with JDs and MPPs could and should be involved in the policymaking process. Having abdicated my role in the activity, I would then vocalize my dissatisfaction with House Resolution X or Senate Bill Y.

Over the last year, many (see The Atlantic for starters) have written about the need for public health to put on its policy-themed uniform and get to work on shaping policy agendas as it has done in the past. Through the health policy courses I have taught and will teach in the future, I am trying to instill in my students urgency in not shying away from engaging in the policymaking process. After all, policy made and informed solely by policymakers is divorced from the on-the-ground struggles practitioners face on a daily basis.

While it is important to help build up the policy chops of the future of our workforce, it is also imperative to support and shore up those of our current practitioners: You. You, after all, are currently managing the very real consequences and impacts of enacted legislation. Your teams are preparing for the compliance visits and audits. And all this work may seem neverending: by the time you’ve managed to understand one rule, a new regulation has passed that upends how you operate.

However, If you are a small business, a non-profit, or a healthcare provider (or any other number of entities), there is the reality that you may not have the ability to allocate funds or other resources to build a robust policy arm for your operation. At the same time that policy can move from concept to passage at a painstakingly slow clip, the amount of changes and edits made along the way can happen at lightning speed. So with limited resources, how exactly can you actively participate? Allow me to propose some suggestions.

1. PRIORITIZE (WHICH MAY MEAN TO MINIMIZE)

There is policy about everything – or at least everything that anyone has ever had a problem with. In 2017, the North Carolina General Assembly introduced House Bill 73 – Prohibit Driving With Animal in Lap (which I will here say I am in total agreement with). In 2021, the 102nd General Assembly of Illinois drafted House Bill 0024 which amends the state’s School Code to require sex education to cover the topic of sexting. This year, the United States Senate is set to continue discussion on the tax components of the Build Back Better Act.

At the same time that there are significant bodies of legislation that do not impact the work you do, there are plenty of enacted policies (and those in the works) that will influence how you do business (and what business you conduct). But you cannot focus on them all. What does that mean? It means you must prioritize your policy areas of interest.

Prioritizing things can seem scary to some, because prioritizing means you may have to minimize the number of things you pay attention to. That’s OK. Much like you cannot tackle all of your business goals in one year, you also cannot stay on top of a policy agenda that includes every legislation that impacts your company. Unless you are a policy shop, you have many other things to accomplish outside of tracking and trying to inform the development of policy. Those “other things” (commonly known as your “goods and services”) should inform how you prioritize your policy agenda: Start by following those policies that correlate to your overall business goals – what do you want to accomplish this year, in three years, in ten years – and how you set out to achieve them.

2. KNOW WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DO

Depending on the type of business you are involved in, there are rules and regulations (read: policies) that may dictate how you can and cannot engage with policymakers. For example, you cannot use federal funds for lobbying activities, but you can, in some instances, use them to provide education to your elected officials about specific topics of interest to you. There is a difference between what you can do as a representative of your business versus as a private citizen. Be aware of those rules and scrupulously conscious of what hat you are wearing when.

Once your policy priorities are set, it is very important that you take the time to understand what you can do about them. If you are unsure how to find or understand these, start by checking out the trade or professional association for your field of business. Knowing these guardrails will then inform how you allocate resources and how you track the success of your policy initiatives.

3. PLAN HOW YOU WILL DO IT

If you have been following Atrómitos for any period of time, you know how important we think Business Plans are. (After all, we have written about them and provided you a template to get started.) The TL;DR behind a Business Plan is that it lays out what you do, why you do it, and how you get it all done.

Whether we like to admit it or not, much of what we do and how we do it is in response to policy – either enacted or a lack thereof. It would therefore follow that your Business Plan should contemplate some level of engagement with policy. This does not necessarily require dedication of an entire policy section in your plan. It could exist as a goal in your Performance Evaluation section. Engagement with elected officials may be one of your Marketing initiatives. Identifying who on your team is responsible for developing and tracking policy should be included in your Organizational Structure. Especially for those just getting their feet wet in the policy world, the details on how are not important; instead, it is including it at all that matters.

YOUR NEW POLICY AGENDA

With your priorities identified, an understanding of what you can do, and a plan for how you will get it done, you are ready to dive head first into your newly formed policy agenda.

No?

Not to worry – it’s not always an easy thing to jump into. If you have never engaged in policy work before, consider starting small: perhaps for this first year, you only focus on one specific policy.

Or this may be the year where your agenda consists solely of tracking policy through the legislative machine.

For those of you who have done this before, I encourage you to add another focus area, dedicate an additional resource, or engage in a new activity.

Regardless of where you are starting from, the important fact is that you have done just that: started. In the long and grueling process of transformation – that is often the hardest part: the first step. But in the end, our policy environment will be better for it.