Advocacy Track for Children’s Mercy Residents

The Advocacy Track is designed to support residents with a passion for advocacy and an interest in taking a leadership role in advocacy throughout their careers. Participating residents will gain the skills and knowledge necessary to improve child health equity by engaging communities and communicating with policy makers. There are two Advocacy Track opportunities: the MOCARE Advocacy Leadership Track and the Legislative Advocacy Track.

The MOCARE Advocacy Leadership Track offers a unique educational experience in that it is a statewide collaborative comprised of up to 2 residents per class from each of the 4 pediatric residency programs in Missouri. Participants will have ample opportunities to share ideas, working together to create broad system changes in their individual communities and across the state. Selected residents will attend a state-wide conference to learn key skills and strategies, such as leading a group effectively, identifying meaningful issues within a community, collaborating with community partners, building coalitions, writing grants, and influencing public policy. They will each complete a longitudinal advocacy project, under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Some examples of current and past projects include:

• Lauren Arney, MD – Dr. Arney’s project sought to evaluate and advocate for ways to make the Children’s Mercy Hospital’s main hospital campus more walkable and accessible and elevate the voices of youth in this evaluation. She organized walkability audits with the local Girls on the Run group of girls to teach about walkability and conduct a survey with them. Ultimately, the goal is for change to come from kids in the community.
• April McNeil, MD – Synergy Services is an organization that, among other services, provides emergency shelter to adolescents who are in crisis due to abuse, neglect, running away, or homelessness. Dr. McNeil implemented the use of a standardized screening tool for high risk sexual behaviors for adolescents upon arrival to Synergy, then facilitated access to health care services and contraception.
• Alexandra Prosser, MD – Dr. Prosser coordinated healthy food demonstrations for patients and their families at the Children's Mercy Broadway Clinic with the goal of addressing food insecurity and obesity prevention. At these events, chef educators demonstrated interactive, healthy recipes and a local mobile market provided free bags of produce for families to take home. Additionally, there was a table of resources that included information on nutrition, government programs, and local food pantries.

The Legislative Advocacy Track was created in 2021 for residents who wish to focus primarily on legislative advocacy at the local, state, and federal level. Experiential learning will be provided in topic areas such as communicating with legislators, providing legislative testimony, and building coalitions.

All residents interested in learning more about community health and child advocacy will be supported by mentorship and can participate in a concentration in advocacy even if participation in an Advocacy Track program is not possible.

View the roster of residents in the Advocacy Track.