You are a health educator for a local children’s hospital that wishes to partner with schools in the area on an initiative to encourage healthier eating habits among students and staff alike. A visit to a local school site to explore partnership reveals that teachers and staff may be reluctant to make changes to their own eating habits. For example, when asked (during an impromptu meeting with a small group of teachers) about her willingness to replace existing vending machine options with healthier ones, one teacher remarked, “Now you’re going after my soda and cookies. What’ll it be next?” Her colleagues appear to agree with her on this.
Case Assignment
Read Chapter 6, Section 2 and Chapter 7, Section 8 of the Community Tool Box (i.e., Using Principles of Persuasion and Identifying and Analyzing Stakeholders and Their Interests) and, after doing so, write a four-page paper in which you describe the steps you will take to achieve “buy-in” from teachers and all other stakeholders in this initiative. Your paper should specify clearly:
Primary, secondary, and key stakeholders in this potential partnership
Three principles of persuasion most relevant to the above scenario
Your strategy is to engage all stakeholders over the course of this initiative (i.e., from conceptualization, to grant seeking, to project implementation, through evaluation and refinement).
Length: 4 pages typed, double-spaced.
