Leadership and Policy Experience by New Hampshire-Maine LEND

All trainees in the New Hampshire-Maine LEND program complete a Leadership and Policy Experience during the Spring semester. This includes active participation in the following activities:

• Didactic training through an eight-week public policy module that covers Maternal and Child Health (MCH), Title V, and public health systems and policy. They receive instruction on and have opportunities to practice issue framing, policy analysis, persuasive communication, and legislative visits. 
• Three Interdisciplinary Leadership Intensive (ILI) sessions: (a) community organizing, (b) Disability Policy Seminar* and (c) Capstone Poster presentations.
• A Policy Analysis and Policy Brief Assignment. The cohort is separated into eight groups that look at a different aspect of the same policy issue; they do their own research but work together to develop a single policy brief** through negotiation, consensus building, and prioritization. 

* Before traveling to Washington for the conference, there is a significant amount of practice and coordinated preparation for presenting the policy brief to Members of Congress and staffers during Capitol Hill visits (every trainee is expected to speak at least once). They participate in mock visits during the AUCD Trainee Policy Summit and debrief the entire experience in subsequent Friday sessions.

** A sample policy brief on Medicaid from 2017 is included as an attachment to this strategy.  A poster from the 2017 AUCD Conference that outlines the Leadership and Policy Experience in more detail is also attached.

This series of activities requires commitment on the part of faculty to keep up with relevant policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels. The program formed a Policy Team that initially developed learning objectives and activities for the Leadership and Policy Experience; they continue to meet by phone each December to consider the current policy landscape and potential issues to focus on for that year. We've also learned that it can be challenging to engage trainees that fall along a spectrum of awareness and/or interest in policy issues, but the key to doing it well is building a foundation for engagement early in the training year.

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