ESSAY: Use of media in promoting health policy change.

Critique an example of a professional organization’s use of media to promote a health policy agenda. Discuss attributes of success or lack thereof. Suggested organizations include (but are not limited to):
American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN)
American Nurses’ Association (A.N.A.)
American Association of Nurse Practitioners (A.A.N.P.)

ANSWER

Organizations of professional nursing provide a platform for nurses to air their voices concerning policy debates. One of the ways that such organizations could influence public policy is through media interventions that use various channels to persuade, motivate, and inform populations. Nursing organizations can use media channels to disseminate health information and research evidence to health practitioners, the public, and policymakers. Moreover, they can use the media to influence personal behaviors such…

The American Nursing Association (ANA) is an organization in the nursing practice that is dedicated to healthcare quality by maintaining high nursing practice standards. Waddell (2018) cites Nisbet (2010) saying that social media provides a social constructivist and interactive approach that identifies and frames essential matters, which are alternatives to the traditional forms of media. Waddell’s (2018) research aimed at describing and analyzing Twitter and Facebook content associated with three American nursing organizations that included ANA. The researcher found that for the three organizations, there was a noticeable number of social media elements that were not related to health policy. Seventy percent of ANA’s social media interactions on Facebook were unrelated to health policy. This means that the organization is yet to realize the potential of using social media to communicate public policy. Some research shows that the organizations, public, health providers and patients use various channels of media for different purposes such as behavioral change, disease surveillance, online learning, health education, and disease prevention (Giustini et al., 2018). Therefore, the effectiveness of the use of media in influencing public health depends on how organizations such as ANA frame public health issues based on their political motives or political agendas. In ANA’s case, the organization leaders should consider using media channels that underpin the priorities and ideas of public…