Welcome to the Advocacy 101 course. This is the introduction to advocacy, kind of a review of the basics of the branches of government and what advocacy and legislation is. My name is Paul Bruning. I'm the Advocacy Council Chair for the AAOE, and I'm also the Director for the Neuromusculoskeletal Service Line for Sutter Health in Silicon Valley, outside of San Francisco. So this is, again, just the basics of advocacy, governmental affairs, and our branches of government. Our agenda is to review the branches, talk about what are elected officials, what are appointed officials, the differences, what's that legislative process, government agencies involved in regulatory aspects, and then how you can be involved in advocacy. Advocacy doesn't have to be a big, daunting, large forest in front of you with no seen clear pathway through. It can be at first, but if you look at it from a 10,000-foot view, there's a clear path through the forest on how to have advocacy be beneficial to you and your organization. To understand how the process works, we have to understand the branches of the government. There's the legislative branch, which is made up of the Congress, which is the Senate, and the House of Representatives. There's the executive branch, which is the president and vice president, and then the cabinet members. The legislative branch is 100% voted for and elected through our processes, through democracy and the elections occurring every couple years. The president and vice president, again, are elected, but the cabinet members are appointed by the president and vice president, as is the judicial. The judicial wing is appointed, but they are conferred and agreed upon and approved through congressional votes. Our elected officials are the ones that we want to advocate to. We want to speak to them about legislative or regulatory issues that are influencing our practices and our patients. They're elected by us. They represent us. They may be from all walks of life. We are the experts on healthcare. We can influence and make a change and a difference in the regulatory or legislative process by speaking with these elected officials. The appointed officials are the other departments of the government, maybe Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense, Transportation. Each of these departments has a secretary, which is an appointed position, again, but those have to be approved by our elected officials, by Congress. Some of those federal agencies are represented here. We're familiar with a lot of them, but the federal agencies generally take the legislative laws and then they put them into regulatory practice and push that out to organizations that fall under those regulations from those federal agencies. The legislative process, how that works is it starts as an idea or a concept and then you find legislative members, so members of Congress, whether that's House or Senate, that take up a cause and they write the law, the legal aspects of it, and they put that legislative process through various committees for their stamp of approval. The issue happens is if any of those committees vote no, that law starts all over again. That law has to make it through both sides, the House and the Senate. Each side may have its own version of the bill, but they have to come together and agree and both areas, the Senate and the House, have to vote as an entirety and with majority to pass that before it can go to the president to be signed. Sometimes you'll hear of something where they'll say, do we have the votes when it's going to committee? We want to count votes. We want to know how the committee is going to vote and that it will pass that committee before it's heard in that committee because if it does not pass, like I mentioned, it has to start all over again and it has to work through multiple committees before it can be voted on on the floor of either the Senate or the House. So it can be a long and lonely road to passage, but it is the committees that kind of tweak it and change it and modify it. And sometimes what will happen is at the end for both sides to agree, the House will add certain stipulations or the Senate might add certain stipulations onto it or they might combine legislation to try and get it passed through both sides. So for us, what we need to do is quit talking about it in AOE meetings and networking and things and start doing something with this. We need to get out and advocate. We need to be doing visits on the Hill, talking to our legislative members. And how can you do that? How can you advocate? Is find something that aligns with your interests and what you're concerned about, educate yourself around that, contact your representatives. Remember there are people that you have voted for. Maybe you didn't vote for them, but they still won the election and they're in place. But you have the ability to vote them out. You have the ability to vote for them. So you as a constituent are who these legislative members want to hear from. So contact your representatives, share information with them, share information with your family, friends, your patients, those that might have similar concerns, because each of you has the ability and the right to speak for yourself on those causes and on legislation that influences you, your practice, your family, or whomever. And one other way, if you're not inclined to speak to your legislative members, one other way to advocate for your beliefs is to vote. Vote for the platform that most aligns with your beliefs and what your interests are. So in summary, we have the different branches of the government. We have the ability to go speak to those branches of the government. We have the ability to share our stories and what we believe in and talk about the important policies that are coming up, talk about the important legislation that's coming up. Or even if we're really strong believers in something, we can even get those legislative officials to write laws that reflect the things that truly influence and we strongly are interested in. We all have that ability. Policy is a way to make changes in policy, in regulation, in law that influence you, your family, and your patients. I hope you enjoyed this course and you will learn as through each of these individual sections of it. Thank you for your time and advocate.

Advocacy 101

legislation

government branches

elected officials

legislative process