Jessica: Many ambassadors expressed a very strong interest in learning more about advocacy and facilitating the teaching of how their students and how their campuses can become more involved in advocacy. And so, we are very lucky today to have a presentation from our government relations team. So, we have Karen, Amalia Corby, and a few other surprise guests will be participating throughout the presentation. So, the only logistical or administrative note that I will say before we get started is that we’ll have a live Q&A feature throughout the presentation that you text in your responses or questions. And so, you will see the instructions for that when we get to the first slide, but just know that if you want to participate you should have your phone out and ready. And with that I will turn it over to the government relations team. And if you are talking we can’t hear you, you need to unmute yourself.
Karen: [Laughs] Thanks Jessica. So, welcome everybody. Our webinar today is Advocacy in Action: What You Need to Know to Become an Advocate for Psychology. So, this isn’t everything you need to know, but it will give you some general information about how to get involved with advocacy with APA. And if you are already involved how to increase the impact of your advocacy. So, your hosts today are Karen Studwell…
Amalia: Got a little glitch.
Jessica: It’s our slides are a little slow.
Karen: I’m Karen Studwell and I run the education government relations office. And I’ve been working at the APA for 16 years working on research funding, expansion of internships, and a range of education policy issues.
Amalia: I am Amalia Corby, I work in APA’s public issues government regulation office. I’ve been with APA about 4 years working on violence prevention and women’s [indiscernible]
Cynthia: And I am Cynthia Malley, policy associate with APA’s science government and regulations office. I support a number of science advocacy initiatives including coordinating our stand for science in districts campaigns.
Karen: Great. And we want to thank all the Campus Ambassadors that have gotten you all together in the midst of march madness, spring break, and all the hours of classes and training all the sites. And want to thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules. As you can see, you’re adding campuses from coast to coast and some folks in the middle. And I think we are going to do this again cause we have a lot of campuses who are interested but I know schedules were tight. So here is what we are going to cover today. We are planning a series of webinars on advocacy and this isreally just a first one to cover things generally. So, we are going to give you some advocacy basics including the definition and importance of direct lobbying, why your engagement matters more than ever, and an overview on how to communicate effectively so that not only will you be heard but that the right people are actually listening. At the end we will give you an opportunity to weigh in on some future advocacy topics that would be covered more in depth if you wanted to have more of an issue specific training and take some action afterwards. And we will also sprinkle in a lot of kernels of wisdom and tips that we have garnered over 30 years of combined lobbying experience so that you can become a better advocate for psychology, for yourself, and your community. So as Jessica mentioned we are using our poll everywhere texting Q&A so if you have your phones out one way to get that started is first you need to text APACAP, that’s all caps, and you’re going to text that to 22333. And that will allow you to join the texting software. So, I’ll give you thirty seconds to hopefully do that on your phones, just text APACAP to 22333 and then we are going to give you your first question which is at the top. So one of our first tips of course is to be informed so we really want to make sure you all know where you are registered to vote so text now which state you are registered to vote you can use the two letter symbol for the state and then we can see the aside from the programs that you are at, you’re probably registered to vote at a number of different states as well because maybe you went out of state for school. I see a couple more states were added. I’m hoping that means you have the software setup so that your texting is going through and that you were able to join the text.
Jessica: And I think the bigger the word or the initial, the more responses it has.
Karen: Oh, it gets bigger. So, we have a lot of people from Virginia. We like those folks down at Virginia Commonwealth. So, I’m going to turn it over to Amalia to give you a little bit of background on APA’s lobbying structure first. [5:55]
Amalia: Alright, so I’m going to talk to you about APA’s advocacy structure. APA is considered the mothership for psychology and our member student affiliates wear different hats working in research labs, classrooms, hospitals, community mental health centers, private practice, and working in communities in school governments and private companies. APA is organized across four primary directorates science, public interest, practice and education. Each directorate has its own government relations office and we all advocate on different things. Science advocates to strengthen scientific infrastructure and to enhance psychological research funding. Public Interest advocates for marginalized populations. Our Education GRO advocates for increased support for psychological education and training to promote the application of psychology to teaching and learning. And our practice directorate advocates to protect reimbursement and consumer access to professional psychological services and federal health programs. Together we work collaboratively to advance the broader APA advocacy agenda. So, these are some of the issues we are working on amidst so many policy issues facing the country. But also, for psychology, graduate students, psychological scientists, and psychologists in practice. So, we are working to increase access and protect patients’ access to care during health care reform. We have been advocating for balanced immigration reform. We’ve been working to combat the opioid epidemic. To increase federal funding for psychological research. To preserve public service loan forgiveness and protect graduate students during the higher education reauthorization. And to prevent violence in our communities. So here is the next opportunity for you to weigh in, you can see some of our test votes up there, so you can disregard those, go ahead and answer this question, what’s your current impression of lobbying? A for unethical, B for a civic duty & professional responsibility, C for a rewarding activity, or D if you have no current opinion on lobbying.
Jessica: And just so everyone knows moving forward you don’t have to rejoin the thread, you can just type in your response.
Amalia: So, it’s good to see that most people see it as a civic duty & professional responsibility as lobbyists that’s how we certainly see it. I think that weighing in on the work that your government does is something that many citizens feel is important. I’m also glad to see that most of you don’t think it’s unethical. I’m going to turn it back over to Karen.
Karen: Great. So, when we talk about lobbying, and we are lobbying for APA, it’s a good idea to figure out what it is that we typically do. So, our job really is serving as conduits between the psychological researchers and clinicians and public policy makers. Really take that psychological research and inform public policy and then take what we know about psychology and services and deliver those to communities in need and underserved communities. A typical day might have us drafting legislation/ideas, taking them up to the hill and having meetings with congressional staff, working with a lot of other organizations that have similar legislative goals thatAmalia just mentioned so that we aren’t going in alone. It really helps when you have hundreds of organizations all supporting the same legislative request. We might organize a briefing about what psychological science has to say about treating addictions, community policing, or health disparity so we are educating the staff before they go and make decisions and that we serve as resources for them. At the same time all the funding agencies we work with them to educate them about the importance and needs of psychology in terms of research questions, health profession training, and education programs for social-emotional developments and needs to be incorporated into some of our K-12 education policy even. And we also bring our own members up to meet members of congress so that they are hearing directly from their constituents what’s happening back in the districts. So, I talked about this a little bit, we think of it like a three-legged stool, so lobbying is one part of what we consider advocacy, and it’s very critical to our efforts, but we like to think of it as really starting with education. We spend a lot of time educating members of congress, their staff, and federal officials about the role of psychologists and the contributions of psychological science, and we cross that boundary of education to lobbying. When we have a specific bill or program that we want congress to support, oppose, or increase funding for, such as the graduate psychology of education program that I lobby on. And we lobby congress either directly through staff as I mentioned, with our members, and with other organizations. We also lobby through our grassroots network, and so our members are able to respond directly to members of congress because they are much more interested in what their constituents have to say than we are. And our grassroots network is critical to our advocacy initiatives and we will tell you a little bit more about how you can get involved in that a later. Finally, through our affiliated APA Practice Organization and our Political Action Committee, that’s when we engage in election activities and raise funds from our members and affiliates to support the campaigns of congressional candidates. We like to keep the focus “support psychology” in congress. So that’s a really important goal for us. And advocacy is fundamentally about building relationships, and to have the most influence on policy we need to engage in all three of these activities. So that’s what we’re doing at the APA, but we cannot do it without the engagement, research, and advocacy of our members and students like you. So why should you advocate for Psychology? Well, to begin answering that question, we wanted to share this short video with you. And as you’ll see it does a pretty good job of explaining and underscoring the importance of being a psychology advocate.
Video: Can one person change the world? It’s not only logical. It’s psychological. It took a psychologist to show that segregation damaged young teens and black children. Testimonies to the supreme court helped to desegregate America’s public schools. That the right design of a push button key pad made [indiscernible] fast and accurate. And massage therapy on premes can save over $3,000 in hospital stay. That no two people have the same fingerprints. That teaching people to change behavior can prevent teen pregnancy and HIV. That a lime bright fire truck is safer than a red one. And now it takes you to keep changing the norm, one person at a time, and change the conversation, one message at a time. When you share what you know on capitol hill, you keep scientific research alive. You improve public health, physical health, mental health. [Indiscernible] Stop talking, and we all lose. So do it for you, [indiscernible], and all of us because when psychologists effect change, they effect America.
Karen: So that’s a little video from our science directorate folks. So, as you can see psychologists do have a long history of making important contributions that have really informed and transformed public policies. And the message is relevant whether you’re focus is psychological research, practice, or education. We thought of showing advocates this video because we want all of you to know that you can make a difference to public policy as demonstrated by what so many other psychologists have done before you. So hopefully those that those who have no opinion of advocacy and lobbying might have a little more interest by the end of our training. Another reason we like folks to be aware to be advocates is that many people up there in congress lobbying for things and if you’re not at that table then we like to say is something Mike Enzi said you’re on the menu. So, any programs that we participate in really depends on our involvement with congress and drafting those legislative proposals that psychology is not left behind. I’m going to turn it over to Amalia for a little advocacy basics.
Amalia: So, what is advocacy? There are many definitions of Advocacy, but we think this one captures it well for our purposes. Advocacy is a set of targeted actions directed at decision makers in support or in opposition to a specific policy issue. As you can see here, and we will discuss in more depth later, there are lots of different types of activities that make up advocacy. Anything ranging from a protest, having a meeting on capitol hill, or simply writing an email to a member of congress. So, what does this all mean? Advocacy is a process and not an event. A series of actions intended to affectsome kind of change. It doesn’t happen overnight and a lot of it can take many many years. Advocacy occurs at all levels whether it’s to get a lease law passed, to change regional accreditation standards, state or federal tax policies, or even at the international level seeking treaties/declarations on issues such as trade, human rights or climate change. In short advocacy involves a range of actions that not only raise awareness of a need or problem, but also include efforts that will result in change such as passing a new law that establishes a new program. Alright, here’s another poll. In a few words, tell us why people don’t get involved in politics. We’ll give you a little bit longer for this one since it is a short answer question. So, these are great answers and I am pretty sure you can all see those popping up on your screen. I think there are commonalities people feel complacent, they don’t feel like they are going to be heard, they don’t feel like they know enough. I’m sorry for the person whose senators don’t respond them. And I think about the lack of time, we all have very busy schedules, even as a lobbyist. Our job is to advocate, and we certainly don’t feel like there in enough time in the day to do all of the things that we need to do. I’m going to click over to the next slide, thanks for your responses on that. Oops. [Laughter] There we go. So this is our slide on why people don’t get involved and you’ll see many of the things you said echoed in these bullet points politicians are corrupt, people are not aware of the issues, they don’t know what to say, however, hopefully by the end of this webinar you’ll feel like you should and that you will get involved. So, there are definitely consequencesto not getting involved in advocacy first regarding federal policy making there can be a lack of understanding of psychology that may result in psychology not being considered an essential health profession or as a part of the STEM discipline. Regarding programs, noninvolvement might result in psychology being excluded from federal programs or included but with obstacles. And finally, regarding funding of federal grants or programs that are informed by psychology, noninvolvement can result in flat funding, or no funding at all. So now you know what advocacy is,why it’s important, and the consequences of noninvolvement remember it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Advocacy, as we said before, is a set of steps or actions intended to affectsome kind of change and persistence is key. That’s your tip number two, persistence is key.
Karen: Alright I hate to move our little presidents race from the map butnow it’s time to get into a little technical language from those folks who didn’t have any political science classes in undergrad or graduate school. So, before we get started learning about that, it might be helpful to learn a little about the process is actually supposed to work. So, the federal legislative process is that process by which laws are enacted and federal programs are created, funded, and implemented. And it’s also the processcongress uses to eliminate or defund programs or put roadblocks in implementation. So, most people think of congress when we think of advocacy but its also important to remember that there are three branches of government and that each play a role in making, implementing, and interpreting the laws. APA lobbies for or against specific legislation, but after passage the administration and its departments will decide how its implemented and they will usually take public comment as they develop the regulations implementing the laws.