Advocacy

Leveraging Policy to Enact Change

The policy team at the Center for Prevention advocates for change at all levels of decision-making across the state of Minnesota. From non-profit policy to state law, our team advances health equity by:

• Cultivating leaders who speak for and from the community
• Developing strategic coalitions, cohorts, and partnerships with community-based organizations and indigenous communities
• Advancing public policy that improves healthy eating and commercial tobacco control
• Embedding equity into core functions of systems, policies, decision-making processes, and structures that determine health
• Monitoring proposed legislation and evaluating its impact on public health and health equity.

Successful policy change in 2023 actively supported by Blue Cross

• Historic investment made to support children and families including significant investment in childcare and early learning and home visiting, the creation of a Department of Children and Families, and investments into early childhood mental health (an impressive total investment of $1.9 billion/biennium)
• Expansion of MinnesotaCare eligibility to undocumented children and adults
• Establishment of the largest-in-the-nation child tax credit
• Full funding for universal school meals
• Expanded food shelf funding
• Reduction of barriers to commercial tobacco cessation and treatment
• Creation of a dedicated commercial tobacco prevention account for the JUUL settlement funding
• The state’s largest housing investment in history