A National Voter Registration Campaign.

Research suggests that increased voting among adults is associated with improved child health. Despite the benefits of voting, the United States has low voter turnout compared with peer nations. Turnout is especially low among marginalized people in the United States. Voter registration is essential for increasing voter turnout, and registration efforts have been successfully carried out in clinical settings. Working with a nonprofit called Vot-ER, we advocated for nonpartisan voter registration efforts in pediatric settings nationwide preceding the November 2020 US elections. We describe lessons learned from these efforts. Using data obtained from Vot-ER, we also provide the first estimates of participation in a national voter registration campaign in pediatric settings. There was widespread engagement in voter registration efforts among pediatricians in 2020. Many lessons were learned from these efforts, including the benefits of advanced planning because registration deadlines can be up to 1 month in advance of Election Day. Obtaining buy-in from numerous stakeholders (e.g., health center leadership, public relations teams) supports widespread staff participation. Also important is to consider the tradeoffs between active voter registration (in which staff can broach the topic of voting with patients and families) and passive efforts (in which voting is discussed only if patients or families inquire about it). These and other lessons can inform future voter registration efforts in diverse pediatric settings across the country.

Learner Milestones to Guide Decolonial Global Health Education.

The current movement to 'decolonize' global health aims to both dismantle colonial frameworks that perpetuate inequity and racism, as well as to rebuild and uplift structures and systems that celebrate indigeneity. However, it is critical to recognize that teaching decoloniality within global health education is more than just the acknowledgement that there are key paradigms missing from current global health education. It is imperative to have a methodology to hold ourselves and our learners accountable to progress in practices and ideals that promote equity-based praxis. In this paper, we propose the creation of a tool to assess learner levels and their progression over time in both recognizing the impacts of colonialism and acting to transform their own global health praxis towards equity and decoloniality. We developed a model to illustrate an increasing scope and impact of decolonial and global health equity praxis. We hypothesize through this model that the way in which learners engage with power dynamics and structural advocacy at each level is essential to describing learner stages. Based on extensive literature review, existing curricular frameworks, global partner discussion(s), feedback on our pilot curriculum, and adaptation of philosophical theory, these learner milestones were conceptualized. We discuss the inherent challenges in assessment of the complex mix of knowledge, attitude and skills described in these milestones with the understanding that any such assessment would always be formative, as we all continue learning how to do better. We hope these milestones can be utilized to promote critical transformational change in the field of global health. This requires deep self-reflection and examination of existing structures of oppression followed by intentional reparative actions to embody decoloniality in our praxis and advocacy and reimagine global health based on equity and local leadership.