Course Learning Objectives

SPPH 548: From Knowledge to Action in Population Health:  Learning Objectives

This course aims to grow students’ competencies to accelerate the movement of knowledge into action. To do so, we will support students to:

• “Think like a marketer.”
• “Think about power,”
• “Think like a movement,”
• “Think like a lobbyist,” and
• “Think like a political scientist”

To develop these skills, students will learn how to:

1. Reject the assumption that evidence is the primary factor shaping individual behavior or public policy.
2. Anticipate the central role of intuitive psychological processing in human judgement and behaviour.
3. Anticipate how a person’s value system informs their interpretation of evidence, along with their support for, or opposition to, knowledge to action (K2A) initiatives.
4. Create K2A strategies and messaging that aim to attract supportive, intuitive responses from target audiences by engaging with their priority values.
5. Map the power dynamics in a K2A context in order to identify who has the power to make the change called for by the evidence you aim to mobilize, along with who you should work with in your change initiatives.
6. Avoid busy work in K2A initiatives by using a strong analysis of the current power dynamics to develop a theory of change that specifies how precisely you predict implementation of the evidence will be achieved, and why.
7. Identify strategies to plan a kickoff activity to launch your theory of change.
8. Use communication tactics from story telling and marketing to entice people to join your K2A initiative, and act on your theory of change. Specifically, you will learn to
   1. Create a sense of personal connection with your audience by sharing aspects of your own life as it relates to the K2A theory of change (i.e. Ganz’s story of self).
   2. Create a sense of belonging in a constituency of like-minded people for your audience (i.e. Ganz’s story of us).
   3. Create a sense of urgency for your audience by inviting them to take a specific action now to advance the theory of change (i.e. Ganz’s story of now) by drawing on research evidence to paint a picture of the “nightmare” that might happen if there is inaction, and the “dream” we can achieve if action is taken.
   4. Make your call to action more relatable to your audience by selecting a “brand archetype” and describing the “quest” you are asking your stakeholders to take -- around which you organize your communications (per Sachs’ basic training).
   5. Create messaging that aims to attract supportive, intuitive responses from target audiences by engaging with their priority values (per Haidt’s moral taste buds).
9. Increased clarity about the roles and responsibilities, along with risks and opportunities, for public health practitioners and scholars when it comes moving knowledge into action by thinking about power, and thinking like a marketer, movement, lobbyist and political scientist.

Students will achieve these outcomes by learning about, and practicing the use of, several K2A tools that will help them leave the course with a “Field Guide” they can use in the future to plan and implement K2A strategies.