Title: Goals and objectives of advocacy
Course: Level 3 - Health Education and Promotion > Section: Advocacy

The goals and objectives of advocacy are to facilitate change and the development of new areas of policy, in order to tackle unmet health needs or deal with emerging health needs in a given community.

An advocacy goal is the long-term result three to five years of your advocacy effort; it is your vision for change. The goal statement of an advocacy communicates the benefit that will be felt by those affected by an issue. A goal gives direction which helps you know where you are going. It needs an accompanying route map or strategy to show you how to get there. You can probably recognize them as the overall purpose of the sort of health education work that community health workers involved.

An advocacy objective is the short-term target one to two years that contributes toward your goal. They are specific activities derived from the major goal of advocacy. It refers to the desired changes in policy and practice that will be necessary to help you and your communities meet that goal. It should be achievable using available resource in a defined time bound. While seeing your objectives it should be "SMART". This stands for

- S- Specific - set a specific objective for each of your health programmes.
- M- Measurable - your objective should be measurable.
- A- Achievable - the objective should be attainable or practicable.
- R- Reliable - which also means credible.
- T -Time-bound - should be accomplished and achieved within a certain amount of time.

For example, let see this objective according to SMART principle. You plan is to:-
Increase the number of pregnant women taking antenatal care by 15% in one year. It is:-

- Specific - you plan to increase by 15%
- Measurable - number of pregnant women who follow antenatal care are known
- Achievable - if in previous time 10 pregnant are following antenatal care now it is to change from 10 to 12mothers.
- Reliable - because current utilization is very low.
- Timely bounded - it is accomplished in one year period of time.

All your advocacy objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. The objectives should always be linked to the available resources. In a sense, this is part of the feature of achievability. Unless you have available resources, you will not be able to achieve your objectives.