This second public education model offers a unique opportunity to educate, train, and mobilize leaders around the new health care law. Participants can become spokespeople, advocates, and educators on implementation across your state. The section below provides best practices from states across the country for finding the best presentation style for leaders, building confidence and keeping people engaged after the training.

• Find Your Trainers
• Choose Your Training Style
  • Informal Trainings
  • Structured Trainings
• Build Confidence
• Manage Commitments
• Keep Your Leaders Engaged
• Acknowledgements

Find Your Trainers

• Start with key leaders. Many organizations use the Train-the-Trainer model with their closest allies and leaders. Participants range from coalition partners and board members to community leaders and committed volunteers. These leaders are people who have been part of health reform throughout the legislative fight and understand the basics of the new law. It’s not surprising that these are the people who are the most ready to go out and educate others.
  
  
• Reach out to your broader network. The Pennsylvania Health Access Network (PHAN) began to reach out to their broader email list once they had established a successful training model with their core group of key leaders. This email list grew throughout the passage of health reform, but PHAN had not engaged many of them in a leadership capacity until implementation. Interestingly, after sending out an alert about the training, 60 percent of the attendees at PHAN’s second training were newly identified leaders.
  RESOURCE: Sample Invite (Pennsylvania Health Access Network)
  
  
• Target trainers to different audiences. Some states have targeted their Train-the-Trainer programs for leaders who can speak to particular constituencies. In New Mexico, the coalition looks for leaders with bilingual skills who can help present to the large Spanish-speaking audiences across the state.

Choose Your Training Style

The formality and length of a Train-the-Trainer presentation speaks directly to the intended audience and goals. We found this to be true across the country. Presentations might be done one-on-one for board members or it might be more formalized for a group setting.

Informal Trainings

A great advantage of informal Train-the-Trainer models is that they are very adaptable to fit within existing structures of organizations and are not one-size-fits-all.

• Start with your leadership team. Many groups do short, informal Train-the-Trainer meetings with their key leaders. Health Action New Mexico has chosen this model with their leadership team, who are already comfortable with the new law. Leaders co-present with Health Action New Mexico first before doing group and small presentations on their own. 
  
  
• Enhance existing programs. The Campaign for Better Health Care (CBHC) in Illinois has a Health Care Helpline to assist consumers in navigating the health care system. Now that health reform is law, they are expanding their helpline to provide information about how the new law will affect individuals and families. Through this new model, CBHC staff has been able to identify strong leaders who are interested in talking more about the health care law  and spreading the word in the community.
  
  
• Train-the-Trainer is leadership development. Educating your core volunteers, members, allies, and coalition partners about the new law is a great organizing tool. Not only will you spread your public education message to a much broader audience, but it is also an excellent tool to develop new people into leaders. Whether education is on a one-on-one basis or in a group setting, higher level leaders will build your power and capacity in the long term to influence health care implementation.

Structured Trainings

Other groups use a more formalized process through the structured training model. The length of these presentations can range from 45 minutes to 4 hours.

• Provide an overview of the new law. Depending on the audience, organizers have tailored presentations to the leaders’ level of understanding and sometimes constituency-base. Missouri Jobs with Justice is training their key leaders at their “Real Deal” trainings, where they provide a shorter 45-minute overview of the law with an emphasis on early provisions. Missouri Health Care for All teamed up with Faithful Reform for Health Care to train faith leaders at two workshops in the state. During the trainings, organizers zeroed in on values, justice, and compassion messages – beginning with the workshop title, “The Heart in Health Care Reform” – as a means to educate faith communities about the new law. Groups use different presentations to focus on the issues that resonate most with their audiences.
  RESOURCE: “The Real Deal” PowerPoint Presentation (Missouri Jobs with Justice) | Congregation PowerPoint Presentation (Faithful Reform in Health Care)
  
  
• Take the scary out of commitment. In Missouri and Pennsylvania, the leadership trainings are held for full or half-days on the weekend. By pulling people into a long format session, organizers are securing an early commitment from leaders. If participants are willing to invest a significant amount of time to learning about the new law and how to educate, they will be more willing to take the next step.
  RESOURCE: Sample Agenda (Pennsylvania Health Access Network)
  
  
• Make small group discussions BIG. Give leaders the opportunity to both lead small groups and participate in small group discussions. Organizers have found that breaking participants into small groups allows them to engage on a more personal level, ask more questions, and become more comfortable with the information. When trainers have the opportunity to lead a small group discussion, they become more comfortable with the content.
  
  
• Practice presentations. At the Tennessee Speakers’ Network, the Tennessee Health Care Campaign goes through the same PowerPoint that trainees will use when they go out to events in their communities. Participants have plenty of time to ask questions about the presentation during the two-hour training, and the PowerPoint includes a script in the notes section.
  RESOURCE: Speakers’ Network PowerPoint Presentation (Tennessee Health Care Campaign)
  
  
• The how-to of meeting planning. Participants who receive instructions on how to set up their own meeting are more likely to take the initiative to do so. Organizers in Missouri and Pennsylvania provide information, tools, and materials to their leaders both during and after the training on how to set up community events.

Build Confidence

What’s in a name? Pennsylvania Health Access Network (PHAN) branded their Saturday workshops with a name so leaders became part of something special: PHAN Leadership Initiative Training. Similarly, Tennessee Health Care Campaign has the “Speakers’ Network” and Missouri Jobs with Justice has “The Real Deal.”

• Provide tools to understand the health reform law. Groups have found it is useful to give participants a wide range of information. PHAN gives their trainers more information than they need so that they feel comfortable knowing that they always have the answers at their fingertips when they need them.
  RESOURCES:  Missouri | New York | Tennessee | West Virginia | Faithful Reform in Health Care
  
  
• Let participants become experts in one area first. PHAN Leadership Initiative Training organizers have found that once a leader has become well-versed in one area of the law, the leader is ready to take on other areas.
  
  
• You don’t need all the answers. Organizers build confidence in the leaders by assuring them that it’s alright not to have all the answers. Organizers teach leaders this lesson by purposefully holding back answers during the training session to show them it is okay to say, “I don’t know and I’ll get back to you.” It also teaches trainers how good resources and the process of follow-up are key to public education.

Manage Commitments

• Follow-up with leaders. After the training, make sure to reconnect with leaders to keep them engaged and answer further questions. Organizers in Missouri and Pennsylvania stated that the leaders’ success is directly tied to one-on-one follow up calls, which ensures that both organizers and leaders are on task and comfortable with the new roles. They also recommend having leaders fill speaking engagement requests made by partner organizations.
  
  
• Support your new trainers. Groups with successful Train-the-Trainer programs agree that organizers need to commit to attend a new leader’s first presentation. It is important to let your new trainers know that they have your support in the beginning. Having new trainers go out in groups to present also helps them feel comfortable.
  RESOURCE: First-Time Leader in Action [Video] (Pennsylvania Health Action Network)
  
  
• Be flexible. Although the goal is for participants to do further public education, it is important to be flexible determining commitments with your leaders. Programs should give leaders the flexibility to make a range of commitments including speaking one-on-one to friends and neighbors, speaking at an event, hosting an event, or testifying in front of the state legislature. They can always start small and build up to larger responsibilities.
  RESOURCE: Sample Commitment Form (Tennessee Health Care Campaign)

Keep Your Leaders Engaged

• Give leaders opportunities to succeed. This might be the most important lesson we learned from successful Train-the-Trainer programs.
  • Provide leaders with the tools they need to set-up their own meetings.
  • Give them opportunities to speak at pre-arranged meetings.
  • Attend the first presentation with leaders and provide ongoing support.
  • Provide a variety of opportunities for leaders who want to become involved, such as letter to the editor and phone banking campaigns.
  • Challenge leaders to take the next step and engage lawmakers through visits, testifying during legislative sessions, or through other actions.
    
    
• Provide further messaging and other materials regularly. Pennsylvania Health Access Network and Campaign for Better Health Care in Illinois hold weekly conference calls for their networks to keep them informed. Other groups, such as Missouri Health Care for All and Faithful Reform in Health Care, planned a finite number of check-in calls with trainees after their workshops. These calls also give coalition groups and top leaders the opportunity to be part of a formalized, larger structure of ongoing educational efforts.
  RESOURCE: Sample Conference Call Topics (Campaign for Better Health Care)
  
  
• Bring participants back. To cultivate and inform their leaders, Pennsylvania Health Access Network is launching a “Graduate School” to keep their leaders engaged and up-to-date on implementation and bring them to the next level of public education event planning. The focus of their Graduate School will be on messaging around the health care law and talking to lawmakers. This program, again, takes leaders to the next level and not only enhances their ability to be good messengers, but also gets them reenergized about the work.

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