LAUSR

Background Residency programs have addressed advocacy curriculum needs with various degrees of success. Program leadership at Cohen Children's Medical Center recognized the need to enhance curricula to meet the demands of residents and communities. Design Didactics are structured as a series of conferences, interactive workshops and web-based modules. There is education on the importance of Community Based Organizations (CBOs), health equity, vulnerable populations, legislative advocacy etc. Experiential learning is provided at CBOs, federal program sites, and schools. During this 4-week intern rotation, residents care for vulnerable populations, provide outreach, conduct health assessments, and participate in home visits in a community setting. Each intern develops an advocacy topic/campaign (gun safety, toxic stress, border separation, voter rights) to present at a resident noon conference. To further highlight the importance of this topic, a 3-week advocacy lecture series was incorporated into the core resident education curricula. Results Enhanced understanding of advocacy topics and increased interest in engaging in advocacy initiatives was demonstrated. The mean value-added score for the series was 1.52 (CI 1.35 to 1.7). There was improvement in understanding (decrease in score) within multiple topics. Pre-intervention understanding of public health insurance, school-based clinics, healthcare economics, and CBOs was 2.83, 2.67, 2.89, and 2.25 respectively. Post-intervention understanding of public health insurance, school-based clinics, healthcare economics, and CBOs was 1.61, 1.80, 2.00, and 1.55 respectively (p Conclusion Residents yearn to learn advocacy measures. An advocacy toolkit equips residents with the knowledge and skills necessary to lead and transform future work environments. The curriculum is easily replicable for residency programs desiring to integrate advocacy training curricula without increasing the burden of utilizable resources.