DPH 820 Module 3 Consumer Power and Community Voice Example

Moving Up the Ladder: Giving Young People and Residents Real Power in a Tobacco Campaign

Student Name

Doctor of Public Health Program, Aspen University

DPH 820: Public Health Policy and Advocacy

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Moving Up the Ladder: Giving Young People and Residents Real Power in a Tobacco Campaign

A campaign can speak for a community or with it. The difference shows up in who sets priorities, who controls resources and whose voices reach decision makers. This paper plans how young people and residents will hold real power in a composite city's campaign to end flavored tobacco sales, and how that power will be protected against slipping into token consultation.

The Ladder of Participation

Arnstein (1969) described eight rungs of citizen participation, from manipulation and therapy at the bottom, through informing, consultation and placation in the middle, to partnership, delegated power and citizen control at the top. Her central point was that participation without power is an empty ritual that lets those in charge claim input while changing nothing.

Placing the Campaign on the Ladder

The table places planned activities on the ladder and names the rung each is designed to reach.

A Youth Advisory Board With Power

A youth advisory board of 12 high school students from the neighborhoods with the highest retail density will hold two voting seats on the coalition steering group and control a media budget of $15,000. Members will be paid for their time, trained in public speaking and data interpretation and supported by an adult coordinator who facilitates rather than directs.

Community-Based Participatory Principles

Community-based participatory research treats community members as partners in defining problems, designing actions and interpreting results. Wallerstein and Duran (2010) argue that such partnerships improve the fit and uptake of interventions and advance health equity. The campaign adopts these principles: shared decisions, attention to power and a commitment to return benefits to the community.

Parent and Resident Voices

Parents in the target neighborhoods will be reached through schools, faith communities and tenant associations. Rather than being asked to endorse a finished ordinance, they will be invited to shape priorities, such as whether the ordinance should include stronger limits near schools. Every question they raise will be logged and given a public answer.

Retailer Voices

Small retailers are affected directly and deserve a hearing. Owners of convenience stores in the target neighborhoods, many of them immigrant families, will be invited to meetings with the health department on transition time, enforcement and alternative products. Including them does not mean giving them a veto, but it reduces surprise and resentment. Their concerns about inventory and lost sales will be recorded and answered in writing.

Barriers to Participation

Barriers include meeting times that conflict with work and school, language, transportation, distrust of government and the belief that decisions are already made. The campaign will hold meetings in the evening at neighborhood sites, provide interpretation in Spanish and Vietnamese, offer meals and child care and state openly which decisions remain undecided.

Safeguards Against Tokenism

Tokenism occurs when a young person is placed at a table to be photographed but not heard. Safeguards include written authority for the youth board, a budget it controls, a rule that the steering group records how youth input changed each decision and an annual review in which youth members rate their own influence.

Consumer Power Beyond the Campaign

Consumer power also means helping residents act as consumers and citizens. Young people will learn how to file complaints about sales to minors, request compliance data and testify. These skills outlast the ordinance and support future campaigns on other issues the community chooses.

Measuring Shared Power

Shared power will be measured through meeting records showing who proposed and decided items, a short survey of partners on perceived influence and the share of campaign spending controlled by community members. These measures will be reported to the steering group every six months.

Why Power Matters for Outcomes

Evidence suggests that policies shaped by those they affect are more likely to be accepted and enforced. New York City's evaluation found youth less likely to have tried flavored products after its sales restriction took effect (Farley & Johns, 2017). Durable results depend on community support for enforcement, which comes from genuine involvement.

Risks of Sharing Power

Sharing power carries risks: slower decisions, disagreement and choices professionals would not make. The campaign accepts these risks. When the youth board chose to feature local stories over statistics in its media, staff supported the decision while offering data for those who wanted it.

Training for Participation

Power without preparation can overwhelm new participants. Youth board members will receive six training sessions covering how the council works, how to read a survey table, how to speak at a hearing and how to respond to hostile questions. Residents joining the steering group will receive a shorter orientation and a mentor from an established partner.

Paying for Participation

Asking young people and low-income residents to volunteer their time assumes they can afford to. The campaign will pay youth board members $20 an hour and offer resident steering group members gift cards for each meeting. Paying participants treats their expertise as work and widens who can take part.

Conflict Among Community Voices

Communities are not uniform. Some parents want stronger penalties for young people caught with vapes, while the youth board opposes any penalty on youth. The steering group will hold these disagreements openly, weigh them against evidence and the campaign's equity commitments and explain its decision to both groups.

Information as Power

Participation depends on access to information. Residents will receive the same briefs council members receive, translated and summarized, and the youth board will have direct access to the health department's retailer map. Sharing information early prevents professionals from holding power simply by knowing more.

Accountability to the Community

At the end of the campaign, the coalition will return to each neighborhood to report what happened, what residents' input changed and what comes next. This closes the loop that consultation often leaves open.

Lessons From Participatory Research

Partnerships built on participatory principles tend to last when partners share credit, agree on data ownership in writing and make room for community priorities that differ from the funder's (Wallerstein & Duran, 2010). The coalition will sign a short partnership agreement covering these points before the campaign begins.

Conclusion

Consumer power and community voice will shape the flavored tobacco campaign through a paid youth advisory board with votes and a budget, participatory principles, outreach to parents and retailers and safeguards against tokenism. Measuring shared power keeps the campaign honest about where it sits on the ladder and pushes it toward partnership.

References

Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A ladder of citizen participation. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35(4), 216-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225

Farley, S. M., & Johns, M. (2017). New York City flavoured tobacco product sales ban evaluation. Tobacco Control, 26(1), 78-84. https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2015-052418

Wallerstein, N., & Duran, B. (2010). Community-based participatory research contributions to intervention research: The intersection of science and practice to improve health equity. American Journal of Public Health, 100(S1), S40-S46. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.184036