How do you work with families to increase your engagement and influence?
The third and final “E” of our strategy is Extend – these are strategies to use families to increase your reach and influence.
Tier I Coalitions
You may be a predominately professional organization, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to involve families:
- Consider a “family advocate” ad hoc or non-voting member
- Designate one meeting a year to “family voices”
- Agree with your members that you will have one meeting a quarter in the evening so parents and caregivers can attend
- Make room on your agenda to regularly hear input or opinions from families.
Tier II Coalitions
Looking to increase your involvement with families? Extend a voting board seat to a family representative. Provide HCP and other member trainings on how to more effectively engage with families.
Tier III Coalitions
Already have a pretty well-established family involvement strategy?
Grow it by:
- Providing media training so you have compelling, credible surrogates you can call on for media engagement
- Host Op-Ed writing sessions that further empower families to show their support for vaccines more visibility
Using Families to Support Social Media
For better or worse, a lot of vaccine conversations are happening on social media, so it’s important to get out there on social media and educate folks!
A lot of coalitions are reluctant to enter into the social media space because of anti-vaxxers, but family engagement provides ways to make it easier. Consider a group of family volunteers who can support your social media presence. They can post, cross-post, and share as well as act as moderators to keep anti-vaxxers from burying your efforts in negative comments.