Teaching Advocacy to Public Health Students: The New Jersey Experience

Increasingly, the profession of health education expects its practitioners to effectively advocate for both health education and the promotion of healthy practices, programs, and policies. This raises the question, “Are we preparing health educators for this responsibility?” This article briefly looks at the role of advocacy in health education practice; summarizes an assessment of how, if at all, health programs in New Jersey are teaching advocacy skills to their students; and reviews two public health advocacy courses as examples of how advocacy is taught in practice.