Endless POFibilities -- June 1999

Highlights from the Advocacy Session
at The First Premature Ovarian Failure Conference held October 24, 1998. Presented by Karen Hendricks, JD, Assistant Director, Dept. of Government Liaison, American Academy of Pediatrics. Member, Executive Committee Friends of NICHD Coalition.

I have a fairly short period of time and what I would like to do is start with a general question so I can get a sense of your lobbying IQ, and your advocacy IQ. How many of you have ever met with your member of Congress and/or Senator or a State legislator (counting – a few hands)? We are going to have to work on that. OK, how many of you, OK, this is one I can get you on, perhaps more of you have done this, have ever written a letter to the editor of a newspaper or magazine. If it’s the same people, don’t raise your hands (counting – better). OK, here’s another one: how many of you have ever, while you are hanging out in your kitchen watching C-Span like most of us do here inside the beltway, have you ever called in to C-Span or called in to a radio show. (One woman raised her hand to all). You, young woman, quite the advocate. OK, better. Well that gives me some sense of where all of you are, politically and legislatively and I don’t mean politically by your party because that really is irrelevant. The issue is how much of an advocate and activist you are. Then I will start with this really simple definition of advocacy. It is probably something that all of you do and you just don’t call it advocacy or you don’t call it necessarily lobbying. In its simplest form, advocacy is to speak up, to plead the case for another, or to champion a particular cause. That is pretty much the textbook definition. It is something we do routinely, but we don’t really think about it as advocacy. What I will try and do in the time that we have is to lay out a variety of legislative strategies, but more importantly, advocacy strategies because there are multiple strategies to advocacy and I don’t want you to think that it is only dealing in the legislative process at all.

To be an advocate or, in my instance, to be a lobbyist for the American Academy of Pediatrics, it runs the gamut from writing letters, we do voter education, filing lawsuits (something we have done in the past), testifying before a legislative body or before a regulatory body or commission. This is both in the state and federal level. I know the federal level best because that’s what I do here, so most of my remarks will reflect on the federal level. But they are absolutely applicable to the state level and when I can and when I do remember, I’ll make sure I invoke the state level as well. Advocacy is also conducting and utilizing public opinion polls and public opinion data and we have obviously seen a fair amount of that over these last several weeks whether it’s who is running for governor of your state, what congressional person is running against someone else, or my personal favorite, the impeachment. So we have seen a whole gamut of public opinion polls and data. Advocacy also is that personal visit and I am going to spend a little time on that: that visit with a legislator and/or your governor. It is also editorial boards and meeting with editorial boards of major newspapers, hometown newspapers, your small community newspapers as well. It is drafting up opinion statements as well. There are a whole host of examples (in the handout materials that were distributed) of a sample letter to the editor, an editorial, a whole host of things so you can get a sense of what we are talking about.

I would like to first start out with a few guiding principles to give you some context. And first and foremost for some of us who have been doing this for a long time we don’t really think about the fear factor, of meeting with a member of Congress or with a governor, or even calling their office for something. My first principle for all of you is, don’t be afraid. You must keep in mind that, one, you are a constituent, and as a constituent you are a taxpayer and you vote, and there is a level of accountability that our legislators have to us as citizens. In my work it is often our own pediatricians who get a little nervous when we are sending them up to the Hill on something. But again, my first principle is just don’t be afraid. Just go out there and do it. Obviously, probably the hardest and yet the easiest thing to do is that first face to face meeting with a legislator, and/or his staff. That is probably one of the most effective advocacy tools, but as I said at the outset, it is not the only one. Your task with respect to the issue that is most important to you, all of you here, is very simple. It is to inform and persuade that legislator why your position is correct, why there is a need for more funding for medical research, why there is a need for more funding on women’s health, or further investigation on health care in general, any of a number of issues, however you want to frame your issue. That is the right issue. That is the right position that you are taking. Probably one of the more difficult things is to try and get a little bit of homework first, to have some sense of who the policy maker is, what issues are on his or her agenda that are relevant to or why you are going in to visit, or why you are writing a letter, and some issues may have a direct correlation while others do not, but you are often able to make a segue. You may know that there is a member of Congress here in this community (talking about Virginia), Representative Jim Moran who is a great advocate on pediatric research because his youngest daughter had cancer. Well, there is a segue. There is an interest in research, and you can make some other analogies with other members of Congress as well as your governors. A few other things to consider that are reasonable to know and not hard to find out: has that particular legislator had a personal experience Is it something that their spouse, their daughter, their daughter-in-law, their granddaughter, their son-in-law, whatever. Is there some relative, or is it that person, him or herself that may influence the way they think about a particular issue. Quite often it is the personal hands-on experience that colors the way a member of Congress or a State legislator might think. With an extraordinary number of women coming into Congress and coming into other elective positions throughout the state, family issues and so called women’s issues are taking a front and center position. Something that we haven’t seen in quite some time so the climate is fairly good. You’ve got a wonderful window of opportunity and I would strongly encourage you to pursue that.

Moving from the general to the specific, let me spend just a couple of minutes on what is probably the more intimidating experience that is the actual visit and sitting down after you have made the phone call and arranged to meet with a member of Congress and his or her staff.

There are a few things to keep in mind, and again, there is some material in your handout that lay out some of these points. You need to go in and make your presentation and this would be true just as if you were on the telephone calling a staff person or calling your legislator, or calling a member of Congress. You need to be simple, you need to be brief, and you need to be straightforward. They don’t have a lot of time. The notion of saying, "it’s simple, stupid, " is a really a good thing because their IQ is often a little short on your subject matter. They may be really smart on defense issues but you are not coming in there to talk about defense issues at all. You don’t want to get too detailed or too technical. Listening to Dr. Nelson this morning, I thought "Oh, this is way over my head." And a few times I was also able to think "Oh yeah, I get it." You don’t want to go to any meeting with the Albert Einstein lecture. You really just want to just provide the facts. Tell your story. That’s something we tell our pediatricians all the time. Tell your story. Why is it important? Most staff and most members of Congress are dealing with and clearly on the state level as well, dealing with 10, 12, 15 burning issues. Every member of Congress has to vote on a particular issue. Every state legislator has to vote on a particular issue, so they don’t really have time to be really smart. So provide them with a short, preferably a one-page concise fact sheet, in plain English, that adds to their knowledge base, something that they can use in the future, something that can be used. Often times, when the member of Congress is on the floor making a statement, you or another constituent will have provided them that information, those facts, those statistics, that story, that constituent’s story. All of you will have that constituent’s story to tell. You want to try and be as firm and as persuasive as one can be and often times that is really difficult. We’ve had numerous experiences when we have gone in to lobby on gun control and, you see the moosehead in the member of Congress’s office and you just think, maybe this is not a good topic to talk about right now, or he was the NRA Father of the Year. It’s a problem. But, nonetheless, you know you try and go and you are trying to be as persuasive and firm as you can be, without being too abrasive or confrontational and there are times when you know, "you dance with the one who brung you." Sometimes you just have to go for it if a legislator is not quite getting the picture. Know what the opposition is. On an issue such as why all of you are here, premature ovarian failure, I don’t necessarily think that there is a lot of opposition to that issue. So given that, you may not need to know the objections. On the other hand, with respect to if you are going in saying that we need to increase funding for research at the National Institutes of Health, or in other venues, or on your state level, or in your community hospitals, there may be folks who will say, "well, why should I be spending, why should we be spending dollars on that, when we could be spending dollars on flu shots for seniors," (and I am not picking on seniors, I aspire to being a senior very soon), but, you know, you get that juxtaposition so when feasible know what the objections are so that you can be on the offense. If you are able and you can work in coalition and partnerships, that is extremely important that there is a community that is coming to speak on a particular issue, that it is not only your issue. You are bringing, whether it is doctors and nurses and hospitals, and other support groups to your table, giving that information and expressing that this is not isolated in your community but that it is a shared value of your community.

And, finally, one of the things I have found, in almost twenty years of being in Washington, DC, a lot of members, especially on the federal level, really are children and they like to be thanked for something really good that they did, even if it is a stretch, and usually it is a stretch But if you can go in and say, "You know, that was really a great thing on such and such, and I am really pleased," and then go in and give your message, that is most helpful. It gives the sense that you really are not just focused on why you are there, but you really are an engaged citizen.

I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about the media as an additive tool. We are bombarded with any of a number of things such as TV and radio and the media is an extraordinarily powerful tool. It is also a very expensive tool, but it is very powerful. The media provides us a lot of really important venues, whether it is the television, radio, cable. A lot of the cable networks have public access and you can utilize public access. Or you can visit your editorial board of the newspaper. Just thinking about, sort of narrowly, the inside the beltway approach to things, members of Congress here read their hometown paper, they read the Washington Post, and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The last 3 are tough markets to get into, but their hometown newspaper from whence many of you may come is a lot easier and we do definitely urge you to meet with editorial boards, to write letters to the editor.

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