Policy & Advocacy

VAPHA’s vision is to become an independent trustworthy voice for public health in Virginia. If you would like to help us develop this capacity to educate and inform policymakers or if you would like to offer your subject-matter expertise, please contact us.

APHA Public Health ACTion (PHACT) Campaign
The American Public Health Association is mobilizing to educate policymakers about the need to have strong public health provisions in health reform legislation. Please see the PHACT site for more information and the APHA Health Reform Advocacy Toolkit.

What Works for Health
What Works for Health is a new tool to help you find the best policies & programs for your local health challenges. It’s an easy-to-use, searchable menu of hundreds of policies and programs addressing the many factors that affect health, including health behaviors, access to care, social and economic factors, and the environment.

You can browse the policies, programs, and systems changes by Health Factor (e.g, Tobacco Use), Decision Maker (e.g, Community Leaders), and Evidence Rating (e.g, Scientifically Supported).
For each strategy, you will find:

  • Evidence Rating
  • Expected Beneficial Outcomes
  • Evidence of Effectiveness
  • Likely Impact on Disparities
  • Implementation Examples
  • Implementation Resources
  • Citations with links
  • Date information was updated