Moving Parity Onward With Every Resource

Audience:

State program staff and/or state level programs that focus on health disparities.

Key Points:

Oklahoma has readdressed the issue of eliminating tobacco-related health disparities within priority populations by modifying the World Health Organization’s (WHO) original MPOWER model for ethnic programming. This new program, titled M-POWER (Moving Parity Onward With Every Resource), was created after six listening sessions were conducted in 2009. The program focuses on community involvement and voluntary policy at the organizational and community levels within priority populations, including African American, Native American, and Hispanic/Latino communities.  Overarching goals of the program are to incorporate culturally relevant, high-impact interventions to influence policy change within priority populations, and to enhance the tobacco movement in Oklahoma by increasing the cultural competency of local tobacco control coalitions and other health-focused community coalitions/groups.

Each program completed a planning year to strategically plan how they will implement each component of the modified M-POWER model answering the three strategic questions (Where are we now? Where do we want to go? How will we get there?). Evaluation is currently being conducted to determine the overall outcomes and effectiveness of the culturally tailored program interventions.

Educational Experience:

Key points will be conveyed through lecture and PowerPoint including: the steps Oklahoma took to look at current ethnic programs, best practices, environmental change models, and capacity within our state to develop programming.

Benefits:

The audience will receive information that is adaptable for their own programs as they work with priority populations to implement policy and change social norms around tobacco.