Policy and 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
