Effective advocacy requires health professionals to take the initiative. You are most often
moved to act and react when you see unfair, unjust, unhealthy environments, practices
and funding decisions.
Many factors influence your ‘action competence’—a term coined by the WHO in relation
to the reticence of people in post-Soviet Eastern Europe to take the initiative in the
expectation that they must await orders from above. (Denham 2002)
It is an attitude reflected elsewhere in the perception of a role conflict between advocacy
and professional duties—for example, since advocacy often involves influencing
government policy, government-funded health workers may feel it is inappropriate to
engage in advocacy.