ECPO 2019: Advocacy training Angel Martin JJ & Jonathan Laszlo JJ

Good morning everyone. So, indeed, I’m Angel, that’s the Spanish way of pronouncing it, but it’s a ha, which comes actually from Arabic, so it’s something that probably in your languages you may not find. So, I’ve been called many, many ways, and I even recognize all of them, and I love all of them, because it shows actually the diversity, also the diversity of this group as well.

So, again, call me whatever you want, as long as it starts with A and ends with L. So we’re good with that. We typically give these trainings, starting with the story, about the woodcutter. The woodcutter, because the woodcutter is using a tool, which is the axe, right? And his main job, or her main job, is to really cut, chop wood, right? And I was planning to bring that story today, but listening to Tina yesterday, I realized that actually I would need to adapt that to the audience a bit.

So I decided actually to bring a different story. Do you guys recognize who is on the screen? Someone who does not know who is on the screen? Don’t be shy. It’s okay.

You don’t know who she is? Oh, that’s interesting. So, women don’t know? Okay. So, can anyone tell me, I mean, the name of this person, Spiderman? Peter Parker.

Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. Yeah, correct.

What differentiates both of them? Anyone? He hides his face. Yeah? He hides his face. He hides his face? That’s a cool one.

He shows power. Yeah. She has power on her arms, but no hands.

I just cut my hand. We got an observer in the team. Yeah, I cut her hand.

Yeah, sorry for that. I have to make space for Spiderman. Superpowers.

Right, both got superpowers. Do you guys know the superpowers here? Anyone? Just one or two? The spider alert. Yeah, the alert.

Yeah. Senses fear. Threats.

Yeah? Diana? Sorry, what was that? Wasn’t this girlfriend Diana? No, that’s not a superpower. Well, it depends. It might be a superpower.

But, yeah, any other superpower? No? He can ride buildings. Yeah, climb. Yeah, with hands.

Yeah, good. And Wonder Woman? She can act. She can deflect.

Deflect, yeah. Deflect, yeah. Deflect, yeah.

Yeah, indeed. Well, I’ll show you. It’s not that you have to do it, yeah.

There is something really, really interesting for me as difference between these two. She is a divinity. She’s a goddess.

So she was born with that superpower. And she actually was mature with her superpower. He, no one’s mentioned that.

He’s a teenager. He’s in very early days of his superpower. And if you have seen the last movie, actually he doesn’t know how to handle his superpower.

So he learned that over the film. And he’s still learning. And the reason why I wanted to bring that today is because I realized yesterday, particularly when I heard to John, but also when I heard you, Vicky, that you guys got a superpower.

But then what I realized is that maybe you still don’t know how to apply and use that superpower to its full potential. And that’s what this is about. I think Ana really, yesterday, nailed it down in really trying to show how actually can you get better with your superpowers.

I know here we’ve got different maybe levels of people. People who have used these superpowers probably more often. They’re used to that.

You’re guys very experienced advocates. Maybe others are starting the journey of being advocates. So we will try to bring everyone up to the same level.

And I would like actually to say something else. So to me, it’s always important to learn from those who really master advocacy and campaigning. And for me, if there is a community that really masters campaigning, it’s the environmental community.

They have really shaped society over the last few years. And it’s not only one person, one organization. It’s many different organizations and people.

It’s a movement. As you can recognize sometimes also around you and your communities. And what is interesting here, this is a book which I always recommend.

And I don’t have permission with it. But this has really inspired me, this book. And it’s a hard book to read, by the way, because it’s very complex.

Chris Rose is very analytical. He used to run many, many campaigns for several environmental NGOs. He’s a consultant to environmental NGOs.

That’s what he does as a profession. And what is interesting here is he identifies different stages of advocacy. So he starts by saying, you guys need to first identify a problem.

There needs to be a problem. It’s like what we were discussing yesterday. There needs to be a victim.

Because that’s something that people then would like to really address. But also, there needs to be, and this is, please take also the words with caution, there needs to be an enemy. There needs to be something that needs to be fought.

And then, after that, then you say, well, actually, that will help us to engage. If we both agree that we have a common cause, that we have a common enemy, then we can both work together and address that enemy. An enemy may not be a person.

May be a system, may be the environment, may be anything. And then, when we engage, we call to action. It’s what I said yesterday.

You guys build up a lot of energy in people. You were building energy in me yesterday, really. So, for example, when you shared your story, I was at a certain moment in time, I was like, it was really heartbreaking for me.

And then I was at a certain point in time, by the end of it, I was like, now if she asks me to run to Barcelona, stop everything, I will do. If she asks me to go demonstrate whatever, I will do. To climb the building, I will do.

You got me in your hands. So, to sharpen the story from Vicky, which was super powerful, as I think we all shared here, actually, what I got, but only later, was actually that your call to action came later, about prevention and treatment. You got it there, but not when you delivered your story.

If by that story you say whatever you wanted, I think everyone in this audience would have done that. And I think that’s the power that you got, if you’re able to get to that stage. Because, as you can see, also, this is very important in campaigning.

It’s not only what you do objectively, so you do research, analytics, you raise awareness, you align, you engage the people, then you all take action. But it’s also what the people see, and what the people feel. And that’s super, super important in campaigning as well.

I think we tend sometimes, it’s like someone said yesterday, that men have feelings, but they don’t show them. I have feelings, and maybe I don’t show them. That’s true, but that doesn’t mean, actually, I don’t have feelings.

And actually, that’s why sometimes some of these campaigns can really engage you, even if at the start you wouldn’t agree with them. But they are able to run you through different stages. So first, from feeling nothing, to really be interested, to be concerned, to have even feel some anger.

From there, you feel engaged, you want to do something about it, you’re committed, and when there is action, then you feel satisfied. You need to run your audience through all these different stages. And this is a profession.

They are not doing this by chance. They are not doing this only because they believe in the cause. They have professionalized this in campaigning.

And this is super important. I think you guys got the power and the ability to do it as well. It’s more really about understanding every stage, and you are able to really shape policy, shape environment, change minds.

If you learn from those also who are applying, actually, this is social behavioral sciences, basically. So they really apply those sciences to campaigning and advocacy. With that, you’re going to see this chart.

I think, Andrew, I think we probably got, and Jonathan will cover that a bit later, but I think we’re going to have the handbook on the iPads, potentially, later. So you’re going to see this chart probably more often from now onwards. But basically, there is a structure approach.

And this structure approach is kind of a logical sequence of how to do advocacy. It doesn’t mean that sometimes you kind of jump from one step to the other and ignore one in between. But ideally, there is a logic why you need to do one, two, three, four, five, six.

So the first step is always going to be understanding. And now I’m talking about policy. But you could apply this to other type of landscapes.

So social media, as we were discussing before, you could apply this technique, this model also, if you wanted to have a social media campaign. So first, you really analyze your landscape. So what’s really going on? I mean, what’s really, really important? What’s the problem? I mean, problem definition.

I think John gave us yesterday, I would say, like a master lecture about the problem. I think he really defined the problem. I was missing the solution piece.

But that’s okay. We’re going to get there. We’re going to have something later.

I think what is also important when it comes to politics, and we’re going to cover politicians a bit later, is what’s the background of that? Why today this is not news? And other things which are maybe less important for society are being used. And I think it’s important to understand all those factors, all those trends. So we run an advocacy training.

Jacqueline, do you already have a question? I do, yeah. Oh, my God. Okay.

She’s an expert, so this is unfair. I need easy questions from the staff, Jacqueline. So please.

I think it’s something I’ve always wondered about, because in the policy world, we always tend to jump straight to the policy. And sometimes we forget what’s actually going on in the real world. So my question is, is it worthwhile, when we’re thinking through advocacy planning, because actually real-world stuff can take forever to actually put through in terms of analysis.

So what do we do? Do we do the policy first and then map it against what’s going on in reality? Or do we start with reality and then go straight to policy? I will show later probably why. You need to first understand what’s going on, because otherwise you’re not able really to tap into the most, let’s say, likely-to-success opportunities. So there are opportunities.

And if you don’t understand your environment, then you have your agenda. That’s typically what we all have done probably traditionally. It’s something I have certainly learned in my career, that you jump immediately into your issue, and then you think your issue is the issue for everyone, is the most important issue for the world, and then you tap directly into that.

Without really understanding that there is an outside world. So we’re right now in Barcelona, and in Barcelona people probably today are more worried about what’s going on with independence as opposed to maybe what we’re discussing today. And maybe this is having actually more impact on them today than what is happening.

But again, you need to understand what’s the context, because there you can find the opportunity you can tap into. So I will always start from analysis. So this is something that we have done actually in Germany.

So I will show many examples from Germany, because actually we had two very interesting sessions with Andreas, with Estefi, where we really learned a lot about what’s going on in Germany. We were really trying to map issues. And this is the way it could look like.

If you wanted to do a map, you could say, well, you know, obesity has been identified. Well, first you have the facts about what obesity means for the country. But then also you analyse about obesity from different stakeholders’ point of view.

So obesity has been identified as a priority by the government, but there is no action. We’re lagging behind in terms of medicalising, like doing healthcare on obesity. Reimbursement is absent.

I think this is maybe recognisable by many of you. The perception and understanding of policymakers about obesity is wrong. It’s not there.

There is the stigma, which is always something that we always want to address. The complexity of the country. Not every country is maybe as complex as Germany or Belgium.

But that’s important. I mean, you need to understand the environment in which you navigate. For example, the sickness funds.

This is kind of more like the healthcare funds. They are not using their influence, actually, for self-administration bodies and in the policy landscape. So, loads of opportunities.

So, what do we do? This is our map. We identify a number of issues happening in the country. And then we say, well, actually, what’s really the most impactful issue? What’s really the most difficult issue to tackle? And are there any overlaps? So, you will find also, later it’s going to be referred in the handbook, a tool.

But you may use every other tool. This is a very simple tool. It’s really like you compare by pairs.

So, you compare basically government being completely unaware of the importance of obesity with society being completely unaware of obesity. And then you compare which one is more impactful, potentially, and which one is more difficult to tackle. You do first an evaluation by pairs.

And then this website basically will run your calculation and will prioritize. In reality, this is not so much science. It’s really more about how you put in order your own thinking and what you understand.

Because it’s based mostly in expert judgment. And this is here an important thing, because what we’re going to do later today is also going to be expert judgment. Which means, actually, that it’s better done in groups, not in isolation, not individually.

So, you need to partner either within your group or with medical societies or with other stakeholders to really try to share an understanding. And then you’re going to get better, actually, about understanding what’s really the most impactful thing and what’s going to be the most difficult thing to tackle. So, again, back to the example that we had in Germany.

So, basically, we got five issues that we identified in our landscape analysis. So, first was the absence or addressing the issue of treatment, access to treatment. Stigma in society, also in policy makers.

Health literacy, so how much literacy was in the healthcare workforce. Well, the medical profession, as well. How referrals were happening.

The GPs, what’s the role of GPs. And the Minister of Health Actions. Were the Minister of Health really active on obesity? So, those were like five topics.

And then, basically, we ranked them. So, as you can see, in terms of impact for people, for patients, we thought, actually, treatment was probably the most impactful. But, actually, stigma, as well.

So, that one was a hard call to make. And then, you will see, further down the line, the actions from the Minister of Health. Why? Because they are not, maybe, so long-term.

Maybe they start with, I don’t know, an action plan or a debate or a study. No, the Commissioner studied. So, it will be probably, maybe, less impactful.

In terms of difficulty, this is the most difficult. This is the least difficult. The Minister of Health Actions will be the least difficult.

Because that’s something that they can do, start doing, soon. While changing and addressing stigma, you will all agree, that’s the most difficult one to change. So, because that’s also society.

It’s really rooted in society. So, we ranked them. And then, why is this helpful? And now, I want to really come to something, an important message for today.

Because this will help you to map the issues, in a way, where you will see those that have low impact and low difficulty, towards those that have high impact and, typically, also high difficulty. And this is important, because what we typically see in advocacy, is that people try to change the world first. Instead of changing themselves first, right? So, this is a journey, and this is building blocks.

So, you need to identify what’s the first building block that you can address, before you get there. Another analogy to this, which I’m recently using, Jonathan, I know, is tired of listening to it. It’s, you basically do something, which is, for example, again, to the woodcutter.

You cut wood, right? And you know you’re cutting wood, because you’re building a house, a wood house, right? But actually, what you want, at the end of the day, is that you want your parents to move in the wood house. And you want them to live there. So, what you do, the immediate outcome, but the final impact.

And I think we are all the time thinking about the final impact, so much. We’re trying to already make our parents move in, that we’re not even able to build the house, we’re not even able to cut the wood, right? So, I think, let’s try to first identify the things that we can really change, that will have an immediate impact on something else. And then we have the building blocks.

So, this tool is basically to help you identify those building blocks. And then you say, I’m going to build a road map, I want to certainly change stigma, I certainly want to change access to treatment, but let me address some building blocks. And the building blocks will be different depending on your country.

That’s why I go back to the policy analysis, not one size fits all. That’s super clear, and particularly in politics. So, step three.

Well, now that we have identified our first building block, we want the Ministry of Health to take action. Let’s define a goal. I’ve seen already, eCPO has put the SMART criteria, so I’m not going to run very detailed on that.

However, I add two to that SMART. I would like to make them smarter. The reason why is because I think the objectives need to be also enjoyable.

You need to feel connected to the objective, right? I think that’s super important because we are all humans and we need to be connected, we need to feel part of something. And it needs to be respectful. It needs to respect us, but it also needs to respect people in general.

So, I think you can also say respectful for the environment, depending on where you are, you will find the appropriate context. But certainly, they need to be really specific, right? It needs to be something which is really concrete. It needs to be measurable.

You need to be able to know whether you are achieving or not. Because otherwise, how can you course correct? And that’s very important. Course correcting is fine.

We make mistakes, sometimes we get it wrong, and we course correct. That’s very important. But if we don’t have any sort of metrics, and it doesn’t need to be something super complicated, but we need to be able to realize whether we are on the right track or not.

It needs to be also assignable. So that means that there needs to be someone who is going to do it. It cannot be something generic.

The stigma is going to change. That’s kind of a difficult objective. Now, who do you assign that to? It needs to be realistic, so it needs to be something that is achievable.

And very important, time bound. Put time limits. And the shorter, the better, actually.

Because that’s something that you can say, I can do this in the next quarter, next half a year, or year. So, the example, again, maybe we need to start shifting dates, right? Because it was 2018. So by December 2020, we want to achieve that the Ministry of Health commits to open a national policy review on obesity.

And they agree to produce an action plan, which includes actions to reduce stigma and increase health literacy. So you see already even the roadmap in the objective. But what is really, really, really clear is that who do we want to assign this action to? The Ministry of Health.

That’s the objective. By when? December 2020. It’s really specific, because we want a national policy review on obesity.

And that they agree on an action plan that’s super concrete in policy terms. Then obviously there will be more details behind it. So it’s realistic, because frankly speaking, for a policy review to be open is something that could happen between six months and a year, typically.

You only need the commitment from the Minister. That’s for sure. So as you can see, this will probably meet the SMART criteria.

And I would say, I don’t know if it’s enjoyable. It’s enjoyable for me, because I work in policy. Maybe it’s not so enjoyable for many other people.

And I find it respectful. So I think this will probably be in the SMART criteria. So I think the German team did a very good job.

Now, this is also, again, very important. We typically try to engage directly with people, even if we don’t know whether they really are relevant for our objective. So that’s why it’s so important to, again, to understand the environment, to identify a roadmap, to put an objective.

And now that we’ve got an objective, not everyone matters to that objective. To that objective, we will have people that can have an influence, positive or negative. And therefore, we need to understand what’s the impact that they can have on our goal, not in general on obesity.

That may help you to identify those people. But when you analyze them, you need to be really, really specific. Can this person really, or organization, impact on my goal? Can this organization have a position about my goal, whether it’s positive, negative, or neutral? And are they willing to engage on my goal? Not in general on obesity, but on my goal? Because maybe they don’t.

And that’s important, because then you can really start thinking of actions. If someone is super influential but is not willing to engage, how can I think of a way that they will engage, that they will find this attractive or important for them? Particularly when you talk to politicians. How can I make that relevant for their agenda? So basically, we will typically list the most influential ones on the goal and explain why they are so critical.

And that’s something we’re going to do later today, in a few minutes. So we basically got maps that I’m going to show later, but before I show that, I need to explain a bit about politicians, which is my world. And we will do an exercise, actually, to evaluate that.

Now, we were talking yesterday about politicians, and I know we typically like to talk about politicians in a not very, I would say, appreciative way. Maybe they are not always most valued, because we don’t always trust them, right? We see what happens with Brexit, also relations between the US and the EU, and I don’t want to talk about people, but you will always have politicians in your mind, right? And then you are like, yeah, it’s just, I don’t like politics, I don’t like politicians. But actually, these are the people who are also shaping our world.

So we need to work with them, and we need to understand them. So what we typically try to address, and politicians will be typically, you will see on the chart, they will have very high impact, and not always willingness to engage. So for us, what would be important is to understand what’s their context.

I mean, they are people, right? They have an agenda. They have a very special way of life, where every four or five years, they are judged, again, whether they can continue doing their job or not. So all that really shapes them as people.

And then it’s really important to see, well, do I want to be reelected or not? That’s important, because maybe if you’re bringing obesity as a key thing that they can champion, and that can help them to get reelected, because that’s important in a certain constituency, well, basically, that’s your person to go. That should be your target. If that person is going through scandals, maybe that person will shy away from something that they will think is controversial, that it’s going to be difficult to handle.

They don’t want something like that. Is this helping me in my personal career development? Is this something that really will interest me? Is that linked to the government priorities? It’s also very interesting. When I’m in the opposition party, so I’m not in government, can I actually champion this cause because I can fight against the government? That’s sometimes an opportunity for us, right? So we could identify these people.

Are they the experts in the policy world about that? Are they working on health care? Maybe. Do their constituents, so the region where they get elected, do they have concerns about obesity? Is there an awareness locally? And if there is not, can we build it? So again, talking about opportunities. Unlike this, you have many other things.

Obviously, the news of the day are always important for politicians. So that’s something also we need to bear in mind. So, what’s the example here? Step four.

What we did is basically we mapped with our objectives different stakeholders in Germany. And then basically we identified those who were more influential in our objective. Obviously, the federal joint committee that decides basically also access to treatment policy on obesity was really the most influential, but maybe not so easy to engage.

And typically what you will find in these maps is that the people here, they are really willing to engage with you, but they are not so influential. But they can be your friends. They can be your allies.

And the more you are, the more influential you get. Then there will be people here. So in this case, it’s number five, which is practitioners, so the medical profession.

And these people can be really influential, right? They have a credibility. People like John, these people can influence politicians because they carry the voice of science. And that’s really important also for politicians.

And these people, it’s not that they’re not willing to engage, but they have a neutral stance, right? They’re academics, so they will be here. And these people are typically your influencers. And then finally, you’ve got your decision makers.

So I will always recommend you to do three categories. Decision makers, so these are the people who can make your goal happen. This is really important.

And it should be one to three people, maximum. No more. Because otherwise, you have not defined well your objective, or you have not identified well your stakeholders.

Then you need to identify who are the people who can influence those decision makers. Okay? This is a simplification, but doctors, for example. And then who are the people who can be my strong ally and build together pressure on the influencers and on the decision makers.

Sometimes the influencers, like John, may be an ally. And that’s great. If you have that, that’s awesome.

But sometimes that might not be the case, so you need to build those relationships. I’m not going to go in detail about this. You will find that also in the handbook.

But there is something really, really interesting in behavioral sciences, which is, many of you will have seen that maybe before. Particularly if you have had any commercial or marketing role. Which is Maslow, no? Maslow groups.

So Maslow basically divided society in three groups according to values. And then you could identify groups which will basically share values across. And you will typically have settlers, pioneers, and prospectors.

And actually in society, if you like, we will start being all settlers. As we advance, we will become prospectors. And we may end up being pioneers.

Okay? That will be an evolution that we will do in any facet of our life. In campaigning, what you need to do is you need to target first pioneers. Because pioneers will influence and drive prospectors.

And prospectors will drive finally settlers. So this is a technique that campaigners use basically on how to address audience. Now, this one is easy for me because it was covered yesterday.

But you got it on the slides as well. So again, you can go back to the slides. It’s a reminder.

Another key thing here, the only message I want to leave with you is there is nothing worse than delivering a message from your point of view. If you deliver a message from your point of view, you’re not campaigning with your audience. It’s not working.

It’s not resonating. So you need to think of your audience. What’s really worrying them? What are they interested in? What’s their agenda? And then your message, you customize, you tailor that.

And that applies to any of the segments of the stakeholders that we identified before. So again, it’s super important. Please consider the point of view of your audience.

So Anna showed this yesterday. So this is an example of a message house. I strongly recommend you to use it.

There is something that came out yesterday. Two things for me. One is you guys need to think of critics.

So I think it was Paul, probably, in that interview, right? Where you basically, you were put into a different narrative. Not the narrative you wanted to bring in that interview. And actually, when you prepare messaging, when you prepare narrative, and if you think of your audience and what is going on, and what Tina showed us yesterday, brilliantly, I think, also to the point that Vicky and Anna conveyed yesterday, you need to already advance what might be the potential critics.

So you have already the rebuttal ahead of, or you have the bridges. You can use both. But I think it’s very important that you really work on that.

So for example, in this case, the critique was like, yeah, because if the roof message is obesity must be treated as a chronic disease, they will say actually it’s not a disease. I mean, who’s telling this is a disease? Well, actually, we got WHO backing that up. And we got many other scientific communities backing that up.

So, I mean, this is a simplistic way, but it’s just to show you, you need to think ahead of the curve. And the other one, I already mentioned that. I think if you have a super powerful story like Vicky shared yesterday, call to action.

Always finish with a call to action. Channel that energy in a direction. The final bit, it’s basically building an action plan.

So that’s kind of the more complex place. So that’s where you capture all your actions, what you want to do, who you want to target, all your messages, your toolkits, the channels that we saw in the previous session. And also how you’re going to run internally that campaign.

So I wanted just to show you again another example from another community, which is the breast cancer community, which you would agree actually that they’ve been successful, right? I mean, how much funds they do, how influential they are, how much support they got from celebrities, from politicians. It’s really a successful story, I would say. And the beauty of this campaign is that they were super smart in combining both public awareness, shaping public opinion, but also shaping policy.

It was not one or the other, it was the two of them. And they were really smart in combining actions. So if they were having a demonstration, at the very same day, one hour later, they were meeting congresspeople in the US, which is where everything started.

So they were really combining the two areas, and I think that’s also very powerful, because then you shape the context of politicians. So I’m going to leave again this with you, but what I like from them, and as many of the things that we see, which is the grassroots movements, is that actually you really start from the basics, from the cause, from the origin, and then you build up. That’s the way grassroots movements work.

And I like really that analogy, how it started. So when breast cancer started, they were probably, I would say, even in a worse situation than you were, from the perspective that they were not addressing an issue which is as societal as probably the one we want to address here. So here you have probably one of the most important things that need to be addressed in health.

And they had something which is really important, and were able to convey that message. They were able to overcome the stigma, they were able to engage different types of stakeholders, and it was a decade until they got where they are. But they started with those building blocks, as we showed before.

I think actually with that, I’m really behind. I would like us maybe to do a small exercise, and I have my two key authorities here, sharing. Vicky, Vicky, Vicky.

So you are going to be distributed into five groups, and the idea is that from all these steps that we have seen today, we’re going to do only the stakeholder mapping, because I think it’s good. Stakeholder mapping, something I forgot, but you can experience, basically, is that it’s good to do in groups. It’s good to do first individually, and then in groups.

So, okay, we’re 15 minutes behind, so I will try to cut the way we’re going to present. The way we’re going to do this is basically, you first are going to see a list of stakeholders that I’m going to show. You’re going to see an objective.

You’re going to see, well, it’s a landscape. You’re going to see an objective. You’re going to see a list of stakeholders.

And then you can either do your own map, who you think is influential, how much do you think they’re willing to engage. If you don’t know, you put them in the middle. You put them as neutrally, in terms of medium impact, and neutral, in terms of engagement.

And you may add stakeholders. You may actually say, well, you know, actually, in my context, there is this type of stakeholder, which is interesting. So please add, if you feel.

So I would like all of you to take a piece of paper, a pen, and maybe you do it now. Yeah? Because we will start individually, and then you will all go into breakout groups, okay? So first, I’m going to give you only 10 minutes to think about the stakeholders that I’m going to show, and maybe any others you might have. Second step, we will all go to different charts.

And finally, when you are in the breakouts, very important, sorry, yes, your attention, one second please. Every group needs to nominate a rapporteur, spokesperson, who is going to present in five minutes, so elevator pitch, what has been marked. Okay, so, yes, yes, your attention for one minute.

Sorry. And I promise to shut up. Hello? Colleagues? Yes? I need your attention just one second.

The objective, okay, very important, because the objective is already given. You cannot change that, okay? This is, I know some people don’t like role play, okay, this is role play. Basically, obesity, that’s the problem statement, obesity is not recognized as a disease by the government, okay? That’s where we are in the country, so it may not be the situation in your country, but please come with us, play with that problem statement for a minute, nor by the public opinion, okay? Despite being recognized by the medical community, so very important element of information here, the medical community is already recognizing that, obviously, and international expert groups, ICD, WHO.

Now, what’s the goal statement? Well, actually, we want within three years that the government will recognize obesity as a non-communicable disease and take action accordingly. But that public recognition reflected on the policy is what we want, okay? That’s a very concrete objective. So, stakeholders, I don’t need to read them for you, you’re actually probably more familiarized than I am with them.

If you think of any other stakeholder that is missing there, please add, but again, individually, please choose one or two decision makers, so who can really make that objective happen? One or two, you need to prioritize, if you got five, I’m sorry, but you need to have one or two. Then, four to five influencers, maybe only one. If you think only one, it’s fine.

But maximum, this is a maximum, okay? A maximum three allies, only three allies, okay? People that will be very close, your friends, to work on the topic. Is that clear? Is this a moment for the question? I think everyone agrees with the health minister as one of the decision makers, and we also added the parliament members, because they also can influence those decisions, those kind of decisions. Then, as influencers, we spotted media as a great influencer, and we think they have a great impact, but they are not probably the most engagement facilitators, so we put above them obesity patient groups, national, and national professional obesity associations.

Then, as some allies, we put, and we add a word, international obesity groups as an ally, because ECBO can help national associations. Then, we put also the specialist treatment centers as an ally, but not with so much impact. Then, we spotted also health economists, because economy is always on the agenda of the media and of the politicians.

They don’t have a great impact, but can spot some spaces on the media. Then, we put industry here. They have no big visible impact.

They are probably not also many. If we give reasons for them to engage, they can engage with us, but it’s not the most willing stakeholder. They have great resources.

We need to get all the objectives, the goals, done. Also, for the health minister, because the health minister is obviously the one that has more impact on your goal than media, so it needs to go higher, but you don’t have enough paper. That’s okay.

I love the international theme, because it’s really how you can leverage outside your country. Sometimes, that can be super, super powerful. I think that, yeah, very well done.

Thank you. Good? We have some similarities with the other group, of course. At the top, we have the minister of health, like most other people.

Then, what we agreed on is that, with a lot of impact just beneath him, is the finance minister. He’s an obstacle for the minister of health to make a decision, because, basically, what we said is he cannot give you something that he doesn’t have. For him to help you, he needs the money, and the money comes from the finance minister, so he needs his support.

Then, in the middle, we kind of formed a circle. Most people have them one under the other, but we think that all of the things that we have here interact with each other and influence each other. For example, at the top, we have the media.

What are politicians most scared of? They’re most influenced by media and money, so, basically, health economists. What is the media influenced by? By patients, by local organizations, by healthcare professionals. All of these things combined, they influence the healthcare minister the best way.

And we also have the World Health Organization. Yeah. Good.

APPLAUSE Again, the only comment here is that another useful thing, think about the blocker. I mean, who might be a blocker? Because you need to think that you’re not the only one speaking to the health minister. There are other voices coming into the health minister, and sometimes not so positive voices.

And if you have a blocker, you need to address them, either directly or indirectly. But it’s very important to map it. Can I give an example? Yeah, sure.

Please do. I want to give an example from this block that I work in this moment in Portugal. As you know, during a lot of time, we don’t have medicines for the treatment of obesity for people who don’t need surgery.

We have medicines now, and we want that medicines are co-participated for the government, like other medicines in the country. This is a problem because the finance minister don’t give money to the health minister to do that. So in this moment, what I do in Portugal, I said to the media, OK, I need to talk with the finance minister to solve health problems.

Because the minister of health can’t solve it. So this is the pressure that I make with the media in this moment. And some weeks ago, some weeks more, and I asked the meeting with the finance minister.

So this is the way. We need to put this on the country. The country now need to know what happened.

And after that, we will talk with the minister. Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Hi, I was volunteered. My favourite clinic. Everybody step back for me.

OK, thank you. So, we actually went back to the statement and divided it in two. So firstly, and that’s where our struggles began, because we think in terms of the decision makers, that there’s a very big difference between those who pass something into law and those who actually are the decision makers to make sure that that law is really implemented.

So in terms of our decision makers, we have the ministry of health, because quite frankly, politicians come and go, and the ministries are the ones who brief the ministers to make sure they put words in their mouth. And then our second group to make sure that something is, oh sorry, they have a high impact and not necessarily at the beginning a good willingness to engage. MPs, so the state, depending on where you are, are those who vote.

So those are our two main decision makers, MPs to bring in the law and the ministry, hopefully to actually make it happen and be taken up. Our influencers, again, media, again, towards the statement, what it boils down to is name and shame. So media can be a force for good or a force for not so good in terms of policy making.

It just depends on what’s going on in the wider world of politics. Another influencer for us, actually, are the health economists. We also wanted to talk about HTA agencies, given that we had representatives from France, Germany, and the UK sitting in the team, which are all big HTA countries.

As other teams have said, this is always about money. But what we are not discussing enough within Europe currently is how that, what are the incentives from a health technology assessment perspective, not just pricing and reimbursement, in order to make it happen. So we put them in as a big influencer.

Then also we had obesity patient groups, different ones in each country plus across borders. And then in terms of allies, we have the health industry in terms of allies. We weren’t sure if we should have all economic actors across sectors, because with obesity, it’s not just about healthcare sector at all.

It goes way beyond, so we need to think about that. We also have the insurers. So depending on where you are, that could be the mutual aid state, that could be private insurers, that could be national insurance, so for the UK, for instance.

Basically because we’re saving them money if we actually tackle obesity effectively. Did I leave anybody out? Yep, that’s it. Okay, so we did have a struggle.

We did have to divide, sign off the legislation, the money, and how does it actually come in reality. We took an ideal world. Oh, patient groups as well.

We think that we should be more than just emphasise, we should be halfway up to the poll in terms of impact. Actually, we’re down here right now. So we have work to do.

That’s a great comment. What we do when we use these maps in our organisation is sometimes we see a stakeholder in a place and we say, what do we need to do to make that stakeholder more influential? Do we need to get them better in media, for example? Do we need to get them more exposed? Do we need to give them a platform that they really can have more influence? Or do we need to align with all together? Then that already increases. So that’s a very interesting observation.

So health industry above patient groups. Is that what you’re saying? We ended up with twice actually. Okay, depending on the industry.

I think another group mentioned it already. Yes, there’s a lot of willingness to engage from industry in general, but where’s the impact? Actually, it can be positive and negative because there’s perceptions. So there’s work to be done in terms of collaboration on all sides.

Okay. …discussion, and we didn’t always agree. But we, in the end, decided for our decision-makers, health minister, and regional health minister, if they’re not health ministry.

We have the MPs as influencers. That might not be correct in all countries, but at least in Belgium, the minister is much more powerful than the MPs. Other influencers we have are, for example, the health economists.

They might not be as interested initially, but if we get them interested, I think that if obesity is treated correctly, you can save a lot of money. And that’s something that they are probably interested in because that’s an interesting thing to calculate. So that’s an interesting thing for them to do and then publish.

And once that’s published, we can use it. And saving money is always interesting for those. And even that minister of finance, we didn’t know.

Another one important is the media. We have them both as an influencer and as an ally because that depends on what media and also on the country. Some countries, media is much more on the old style, obesity is your own fault.

And in other countries, they are much more on the newer that obesity is a disease, but it’s going that way. Other influencers are the obesity patients group and the national obesity professionals. Hopefully they’re also allies.

And one ally we put down are the insurers because again, from the information from the health economists, they don’t have to save money if we get treated. And at least in a number of countries, like Belgium, like everywhere where you have national insurance neutralities, what they cover is governed by the health minister. So they can’t just cover a lot of obesity treatments.

They need the okay from the health minister. So even if they want to, they can’t. So we can help them to cover it.

And then that time was up. I think it’s very interesting. I think what I’m curious about this one is why the health economists are more influenced by the media.

That probably has been a very interesting discussion in the team. Health economists, once they do the calculations, we have the numbers. Once you have the numbers, and I’m assuming that the numbers did show you that you can save money.

Saving money is a very powerful argument. Media is also here because there’s so many media. Some of the media will be high, some of them are low, some of them are not willing to engage.

So we put them right in the middle because it’s so diverse. It shows you actually that you can leverage the power of health economists, not only through media, but also without media. And I think that’s why I like this as well.

Thank you. Good. Well done.

Okay, you’re flying. We are. I think you’re going to hear a rehash of everything we’ve already heard.

Our key targets are MPs and the health minister. And in Fanta, the minister of health is right in the center. We are hoping to develop strong relationships with our MPs who will also be very influential.

In terms of our key influencers, we’ve got regional health ministers, national obesity professional associations, and media. The GP Council is a key ally, but also a key influencer because our targets for influence are the minister of health, and we’re hoping that will help. And we’ve got our allies.

We’ve got a big group of allies. We’ve got the GP community, industry who’s on our side, WHO. There’s some debate in our group about how influential some of these groups are.

And the Fanta version of IASO. So… Thank you. APPLAUSE I think maybe a final observation here is that, again, differentiating the professional community is also very important.

Some will be really willing to engage. We were talking with Carlos about the surgical community, maybe very willing to engage. Maybe the broader professional community, not so willing.

And I think that’s an evolution. And maybe you can see that, actually, that they are not an influencer at this stage. They may be an ally in the future, even after we convince the minister, which is the example that he was sharing with us.

So, again, very important to segment your audience. Yeah, just something on that. The health care professionals, we kind of debated on this one, but in Ireland, what they start doing is workshops.

So me and Susie would have gone, and a couple of others as patient advocates. So they would listen to us. So I think they went away with a more understanding of obesity.

So when they would get people in their clinics that are obese, men or women or children, they would speak to them in a proper first language. So I think if we can educate them, it will continue through. So if they meet a lot of patients and they’re positive, and they’re health care professionals, I think that’s a good thing.

And I think the workshops is the way to go as well. So that’s what’s starting in their country. Yeah, I love that.

So as you can see, eventually everyone kind of agreed that we need to influence media. And to influence media, we need to back that up with professionals, but also with health economists, because that’s what’s going to really matter to politicians eventually. And that’s going to address maybe some of the issues, if we’ve got a finance minister who is against.

So actually, I think there is a lot of consistency. Okay, we go higher and lower, but that also depends on the country, right? And we will find different stakeholders. But I’m really impressed, to be honest.

Very well done, really. I mean, just many of you probably have been there the first time doing this. There are other people that I know that have done it before.

But really, a big round of applause to you. Well done. And with this, maybe we’re going to have a final word about the Advocacy Handbook.

And I think probably your first concern right now might be, why is there a child on the stage? And who gave him a microphone? So I’d just like to reassure you all, I am, in fact, a fully grown adult, and I do this for a job. But really, can everybody at their seats see a copy of the handbook? There’s not quite enough for everyone to have one for the moment, but if you can see. So hands up if you can see one.

Okay, good. Right. So what this document is, is to address what might be your second concern of the day, which is, what we’ve had this weekend is really a lot of information, a lot of really good presentations, but we don’t want that to stop.

So we don’t want you to go away and to maybe forget some of the things that you’ve learnt here this weekend. So this is really a leave-behind document for you to have with you, so that if you want to engage in advocacy, which I presume you all do, you can refer to it at a later date, so that we can all have together this strategic approach to advocacy. So how did this document come about? So this document was created by Yazoo.

So thanks to Yazoo, with the support of J&J. And then this, actually this session is the first time we’ve presented this handbook, so you are the first people to see it. But what really matters in this segment is that this tool is for you to use.

And it’s in you using it that this tool will really come to life. So please refer to it, look at it, and become acquainted with it, and I think it should be really helpful for you going forward. So just to explain a bit about the structure of the handbook.

So what you’ll find inside, so if you open it up, you’ll see on the first page that you have the structure of the handbook. Now the chapters are mapped to match the advocacy cycle that Anhel presented earlier. So each chapter addresses a different step on your advocacy journey.

So chapter one addresses your policy analysis, chapter two prioritizing issues, etc. So that if you really want to do a strategic and a systematic advocacy campaign, you can read the handbook like a novel, page to page, and go through like that. So the internal structure of the book.

So within each chapter, you will always find the same structure. So you’re open with what is the problem, why you should do it, how to do it, and then an example. So that’s where you’re going to find every time the whole way through.

Okay, and now I want to introduce you to what might be the best way to use the handbook once you’ve kind of become acquainted with its contents. So if you turn to page 22 in the handbook, it should look like this. I don’t know if you can see.

You have a checklist. Now what this checklist does is it’s a way for you to really check what you’re doing. So if you’re thinking, so for example, if you’re thinking about drafting your goal statement, so what is really your objective that you want to meet? Then you might need to think, is your goal specific? We were introduced to the SMART goals.

Is it measurable? Is it assignable? Is it realistic? Is it time bound? Is it enjoyable? And is it respectful? And if you can answer yes to every one of those questions, then you know that you can move on. Now this might seem really basic, but actually it’s something we all use, and it’s important to constantly remind yourself and to check what you’re doing, because a strategic advocacy program is so much more effective. And this is something that I use in my work all the time, constantly checking that we’re meeting the criteria that we set ourselves.

So don’t want to feel patronized by this, but it’s always good to be like, yes, I can answer yes to this. I can answer yes to this. I can answer yes to this.

And then you know you can move on. So that’s the checklist. And then finally, one other thing you’ll find throughout the handbook is you have hints.

Now hints are really kind of within each section. Things that we’ve found have made our lives so much easier. So just little suggestions, some of which we’ve covered this week.

So, for example, if you are going to go into a meeting, have all your tools ready. It’s just things to constantly keep in the back of your mind when you’re running an advocacy campaign. Anyway, I won’t take any more of your time up, but if anybody has any questions about the handbook, and one thing to clarify is that it will all be sent to you by e-mail.

There will be an online version. So even if you don’t have the document today, it’s coming. The other thing is we would really appreciate your feedback on the handbook, which can then be incorporated into what will be the final version.

So thanks for listening, and please go and enjoy the book. Thank you.