By Diana Alvarez, Fellow, The Health Trust
This summer marks an exciting and new chapter for The Health Trust (THT) as they launch their first ever Summer Public Health Advocacy Fellowship hosting eight fellows. For the fellowship program, the goal is to begin developing an advocacy plan that is focused on advancing food justice, health equity, and community power within San Jose and San Benito County.
In order to efficiently and effectively achieve this goal the fellows are collaborating on research, analysis, and strategy development to better understand the current gaps, power dynamics, and opportunities within advocacy for the local food and health systems. Throughout the next eight weeks, they will examine several community organizations and partnerships, explore ways to measure advocacy impact, analyze how food and health issues are being framed, and identify key relationships that open up opportunities for systems change. These four key areas will be their final deliverables presented to THT staff at the end of the eight weeks.
The fellows hope to develop recommendations that strengthen The Health Trust’s future advocacy strategy in a way that centers the voices of communities most impacted by food and health inequities.
