Recovery Advocacy
Making Changes in the Community
A large part of being in the recovery community is advocating for recovery services. While this can mean advocating for new public policy, it can also mean telling your own recovery story. In this topic page, you'll learn more about what it means to be an advocate and how to advocate for the recovery community.
On this page, you'll find resources that discuss the key elements of recovery advocacy. You can find the resources on this topic and a description of each item in the list below. You can click on the title of the resource to jump down to it on the page, or simply scroll down to see previews of each resource.
Available Resources
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Videos
- Estigma 101 - Spanish Stigma Webinar (~1.5 hours)
- Recovery Advocacy Interview (~1 hour)
- Recovery Events - CCAR/PSC/RCC Meeting (~1 hour)
- Addressing Stigma and Removing Barriers (~1 hour)
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Articles and Blogs
- Recovery Storytelling as Advocacy
- Recovery Advocacy Toolkit
- The Recovery Bill of Rights
- How to Organize a Town Hall Meeting
- Community Listening Forum Toolkit
- SAMHSA Storytelling Guide (70 pages)
- Advocacy Action Areas (4 pages)
- Recovery Friendly Workplace Toolkit (20 pages)
- Moving the Field Forward (19 pages)
- Advocacy with Anonymity (2 pages)
- A Guide to Non-Partisan Civil Engagement (39 pages)
- Engaging Your Community (6 pages)
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Recovery Iowa Resources
Videos
This webinar discusses stigma in the recovery community entirely in Spanish.
How do RCCs interact with recovery advocacy? CCAR's Rebecca Allen shares some of her experiences in RCC advocacy.
In this meeting, CCAR answered questions on how events can relate to advocacy and outreach and how to plan them.
Addressing stigma is important to helping more people in recovery. In this video, CCAR provides resources and strategies.
Articles and Blogs
This blog post from CCAR highlights the ways in which storytelling can be used as a tool for advocacy. The post also provides a few tips for creating advocacy stories.
This recovery advocacy toolkit from Faces and Voices of Recovery focuses on how to promote the recovery movement as a matter of public health.
This article from the Faces and Voices of Recovery discusses the importance of affording people in recovery their rights, no matter which pathway they follow.
This recovery advocacy toolkit from Faces and Voices of Recovery focuses on how to promote the recovery movement as a matter of public health.
This toolkit provides you with resources to organize community listening forums—a new way to strategize and take action on the recovery community's concerns.
How do you engage your community in recovery advocacy? Faces and Voices of Recovery has created a key guide to understanding how to generate community involvement.
This guide from SAMHSA provides information on how to develop storytelling for advocacy from start to finish—as well as ideas on how to share your story.
This article from Faces and Voices of Recovery provides several actionable areas for advocates to create an impact in recovery spaces. This can be anything from working voter registration to online advocacy.
How can employers and workplaces create an environment that supports people in recovery? This toolkit provides resources to understand recovery and create a recovery-friendly workplace environment.
What steps can be taken to move the field forward? This toolkit provides several actionable items for advocacy across the parity and healthcare spaces.
Some recovery programs may require anonymity among participants, so how do you navigate advocacy? This article provides some tips on how to tell stories of recovery without sacrificing anonymity.
Having a voice in government is a crucial part of recovery advocacy. This guide discusses how to improve non-partisan voter registration, education, and other voting activities.
Recovery Iowa Resources
We want to make sure that real voices are heard. That's why Recovery Iowa has its very own Voices of Recovery. On this page, you can read stories from others in the recovery community or submit your own.
Recovery Iowa has recovery ready profiles for 270 towns in the state of Iowa. These profiles determine how ready a community is for a thriving recovery community based on a variety of factors, including existing resources.