If you advocate for, research, evaluate, or fund policy change, a local policy database will enrich and facilitate your work. Local policy tracking enables advocates to understand the degree to which health-promoting policies have diffused across jurisdictions and where to target future investments. It allows policymakers to assess whether and how neighboring (or similar) communities have addressed common challenges. And it empowers scientists with data to assess policy diffusion, identify natural experiments for evaluation, and explore the importance of policies’ components and provisions for bettering health.

Tracking local policy is challenging, however. While many sources monitor state-level legislative policy (ncsl.org, lawatlas.org, https://www.congress.gov/state-legislature-websites), local policy data is not so readily available. In this piece, we share recommendations for tracking local policy from our work on the evaluation of Voices for Healthy Kids® (VOICES). VOICES is a collaborative initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the American Heart Association (AHA) to reverse childhood obesity through public education and advocacy. The initiative awards grants to state and local advocacy coalitions active in childhood obesity to encourage evidence-based regulatory and legislative activity. VOICES grantees can only use AHA funds (not RWJF grant support) for lobbying purposes...

 

Read the full article at Grantmakers In Health