Potential Pitfalls of Swift Legislation

In reality, political decisions that are made quickly often happen without a collaborative, informed, evidence-based approach, or in this case, a trauma-informed approach. Evidence-based or trauma-informed approaches are intended to monitor the policies impacting the social determinants of health Without these frameworks informing the political process, providers and local leaders are left scrambling to juggle the many balls related to the aftermath of the political process including:

Disseminating information Planning implementation

Evaluating programs and processes

Creating an alternate counter plan based on stakeholder feedback

Putting a plan in place to prevent disruption of services (eg: Medicaid payer changes threaten to disrupt treatment services or create waiting lists of vulnerable families due to changes in payment structure) Policies are formulated to address problems Ideally, policy resources are allocated to achieve stated outcomes yet often can be symbolic to project an image of government concern or address a tangible but insignificant piece of the real problem.

Largely, policies fail to include specific performance criteria or direct intervention parameters

An example of a public health approach resulting in advocacy in Palm Beach County is the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Act, which happened as a result of the Broward County high school shooting that killed 17 people. The legislation may be new but the case for increased school-based mental health services has been at the forefront of Palm Beach county advocacy for years Palm Beach County funders have been allocating grant resources to the Center for Child Counseling to co-locate mental health services in elementary schools since 2016 and preschools since 2004