1802-13899

The purpose of this grant is to continue to build the capacity of healthcare consumers in California to meaningfully engage in policy and systems change; to improve the public perception of the value of oral health to overall health; to enhance collaborative, cross-blade infrastructure processes, shared power, and decision-making; and to elevate health equity and social justice approaches within the Oral Health 2020 Network that are fully informed by, and reflective of, community voices. This proposal is built on a number of key successes from last year, including leading a communications landscape analysis to understand community specific messaging, utilizing that information to create and garner an expansive amount of earned media and communications tools, and training a number of partners and partner organizations in advocacy and systems-change. Moving forward into 2018, this work will more specifically look like elevating stories of community resilience and expertise, building communications alignment amongst the other California and National grassroots lead organizations, scaling the advocacy training to reach a larger audience, centering the role of youth as change-agents, and continue to serve as a part of the California Oral Health Network Core Team. This aligns with the OH2020 goal of shifting the public perception of oral health with a target of increasing oral health in overall health dialogue and in public policy. The budget for this proposal is $115,000 and is primarily to support staff time, travel and resources necessary to deepen community connections.