In partnership with the California Department of Public Health, the University of California, San Francisco’s Champion Provider Fellowship hosted over 60 physicians and dentists in the Central Valley for a one-day program to empower, train and support them to harness their passion to improve the health of their communities beyond the clinic setting.

The Champion Provider Fellowship provides training and education on a wide variety of health care subjects, including health promotion, food security, school wellness, safe routes to school and structured physical activity. This particular “Central Valley Mini College” focused upon the implementation of policy, systems and environmental change strategies related to obesity and diabetes prevention.

At the day-long event, the California Medical Association (CMA) led a panel titled “Policy 101: Tools to be an Effective Advocate,” which featured CMA staff and CMA Trustee Shannon Udovic-Constant, M.D., a pediatrician from San Francisco. Dr. Udovic-Constant relayed her personal experience as a physician engaging in local efforts to pass the sugar-sweetened beverage tax in San Francisco, which was approved by ballot in 2016.

“After noticing that approximately 30 percent of kids in my practice met the criteria for overweight, I asked myself how can I have an impact on the bigger picture, that is, outside the confines of the four walls of my office? And the answer was engaging in advocacy at the community level,” Dr. Udovic-Constant said.

The Champion Provider Fellowship training also included a number of skill-building workshops, with a focus on working with diverse communities throughout California. The training featured the Policy, System, Environmental Change (PSE) Playbook, which describes the problem associated with particular health-related topic areas, offers a menu of PSE solutions, and highlights two case studies, one of which focuses on implementing PSE change in a rural area.

The PSE Playbook will be available at the Champion Provider Fellowship website soon.