Increasing Nursing Advocacy and Empowerment at the State Policy Levelmeeting Notes

Increasing Nursing Advocacy and Empowerment at the State Policy LevelMeeting Notes

August 8, 2014

9:00 AM – 10:00AM CST

Project Goal: Inform and empower the nursing community to influence health care policy.

Group Co-Chairs: Roberta Young and Amber Kracht

1. Introductions: Amber Kracht, Wanda Rose, Patricia Moulton, Cheryl Rising, Mary Jagim, Becky Graner, Kevin Buettner, Rochelle Schafer, Ruth Gladden

1. Review notes from last meeting in April. No changes in April notes.

April Meeting Notes

1. Review Funding Proposal for 2014-2015 The funding proposal from this group was funded by the Board of Directors. The work for this coming year includes 1) provide interim and during session legislative monitoring and communication within leadership team. 2) Increase visibility of ND Center for Nursing and leadership team organizations at the state legislature through a Nurses Day.3) Develop communication strategy for linking sphere of influence members.

2014-2015 Increasing Nursing Advocacy and Empowerment at the State Policy Level

1. Additional members to add to group? Patricia will add Becky Graner to the list for this group and will see if Karen Rohr would like to join our group

ND Center for Nursing Leadership Team List

1. Review feedback from April Home Group meetings

From Workplace Planning Group: The group thought the proposal looked good.

From Practice and Policy Group: The group suggested that a subcommittee should be set up for Nurses Day and sponsors could help with expenses. Could also offer CE credits. Thought it would be a great event for students too. The group was wondering about the setup- Patricia indicated that she has reserved the Great Hall and the hall between the chambers and anticipates each organization having a table with their materials on it and representatives manning the table. Could also offer tours, have presentations from legislators.

From Research and Development Group: Should try to get a one page cover page with the main results on it and then the report behind it and on the website if they want to see more. Could revise the education program graphs with all of the graduates and one with just the last five years or so- to help level out the field for programs that have been in existence for a different number of years. Group members indicated that they have used the data from this report in their own work and in grant proposals.

Finance and Sustainability Group: Thought this looked like a good program and that the opportunity to find sponsors for Nurses Day would be a good opportunity to link in some organizations. The group thought the Center may want to take a look at changes in voting process. There is a potential for considerable confusion- particularly for the elderly. Nurses in LTC, home care nurses. Secretary of State has cards on voting. The Center could do some advocacy work for nurses to be aware of the requirements. Suggested that this should be included in the next legislative update call on May 9th

1. Review status of Community Paramedic Policy Brief draft. It was developed by a small group and is in the process of moving through the decision making model using the Community Paramedic Collaborative Email Group as the work group.The group thought the brief looked good and thanked the policy brief writing group for their work on it.

Decision Making Model

Draft Community Paramedic Policy Brief

1. Update on North Dakota Action Coalition Health Policy and Advocacy Leadership Development Group- This group has been working on developing leadership training in Health Policy and Advocacy, Communication, Systems Thinking and Change/Innovation. They have developed a set of powerpoint slides that are currently being audiotaped and will be put together as online webinars. Several members of this group have been involved in the development of these and/or audio taping.

1. Strategy: Provide interim and during session legislative monitoring and communication within leadership team.

• Legislative Update Calls from 12:00 – 1:00 PM on Second Friday of Month during Fall

September 12

October 10

November 14

December 12

When the legislative session starts when should we have our calls? Our legislative monitor does not have the availability during the day on Friday.

The group decided that we should ask our monitor to provide our monitoring table by 3:00 PM and that we should schedule our calls for 3:00 PM each Friday during the session.

• Collaborative Email Groups. As Patricia has updated these groups in August, she has asked if their topic should remain a priority for the upcoming session and if there is a particular bill that should be considered a priority. It might be nice to try and collapse some of these groups for the session to streamline communication- for example several of these belong to the Health Services Committee.

Should we try and organize these differently? What about adding new ones as new issues come forward?

The group thought it would be useful to group these and the collaborative email groups into bigger umbrella categories in order to consolidate efforts and also allow for more flexibility with emerging bills and issues. These could include access to healthcare, prevention etc. Amber and Patricia will take a look at the lists and put together a draft of the categories for the group to look at.

Behavioral Health Needs- 8 members (same as 8 in April)

Children’s Health Insurance- 4 members (same as 4 in April)

Community Paramedic- 32 members (up from 17 in April)

Diabetes Prevention- 5 members (same as 5 in April)

Health Care Reform- 20 members (up from 19 in April)

Higher Education Funding- 11 members (up from 10 in April)

Home and Community Based Services- 10 members (same as 10 in April)

Open Textbooks- 10 members (up from 9 in April)

Tobacco Prevention- 7 members (same as 7 in April)

• Communication with Leadership Team-

We have 2 hidden websites as a place to put materials from the Community Paramedic and Health Reform Meetings. Participants on last legislative update call thought these were useful and that they should remain hidden. They also thought it could all go on one page.

Would we utilize a page like this for during the session- put up resources and legislative update tables? Notes from legislative update calls? If we did this- should we make it password protected?

The group thought that one page would be good and that we didn’t necessarily need to password protect it. Patricia will ask our attorney if we have to publically post our decision making materials, legislative update meeting minutes etc.

Health Care Reform Committee Resource Page

Community Paramedic Resource Page

• Develop legislative platform to determine which bills to track and increase targeted advocacy efforts. Patricia has started to send out emails to collaborative email groups to determine if they believe one of their issues/bills should be a priority.
  

How should we determine which bills to track and which bills to priority track? Last session we ended up tracking 51 bills.

The group discussed that developing a platform based on input from our members would help with determining what we believe as an organization. Designing what we follow would then filter down to which bills we follow. The platform should be influenced by our members. If we start looking at what different organizations prioritize. The legislative committee of NDNA creates a platform to determine which bills to follow- very broad but helps to prioritize. The NDNPA has a set of overall goals that we have developed- we look to identify any bills that are impacting Nurse Practitioners and the patients we treat. For the NDANA- APT provides monitoring- we do not have a platform, we look for issues that are impacting practice or that impact citizens of ND. The NDENA follow national organization issues and aligns ourselves with the key topic areas. Because we have a nice number representing a lot of organizations- would be nice to have a set of top priorities- a platform could help direct us- it could be broad. Organizations could always choose to follow additional bills.

How should we determine whether we should we develop a more formal policy statement on like the Community Paramedic study?

Group did not have time to discuss.

1. Strategy: Increase visibility of ND Center for Nursing and leadership team organizations at the state legislature through a Nurses Day.- Subcommittee of Amber, Roberta and Patricia met and drafted some initial thoughts on agenda etc.

Group did not have time to discuss. Tabled to next meeting.

• Date: March 11, 2015 from 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM CST
• Location: Memorial and Legislative Halls at Capitol- space reserved
• Title of Event?
• Goal: Increase engagement of nurses in state and federal advocacy issues.
• Hotel Room block- Patricia will work on getting a block of hotel rooms
• Catering- Sit-down Lunch- Patricia can contact Capitol Catering to get a menu/prices- legislators and staff= 216 plus those that will attend our event
• Each organization will have a table, facility Management will provide tables and chairs- organizations will need to provide own table cloths and skirting and own electrical cords if they will need electricity
• Registration- Charge a small fee for each exhibit- $25, $5 a person for lunch to help offset costs- We can have online registration for both organizational tables and for participants
• Marketing to Leadership Team- have already sent out save the date information to leadership team in April and in July- Should we primarily pitch this as a leadership team event- to those organizations that are a part of the leadership team (includes all nursing education programs and most associations)?
• Marketing to Legislators- Kyle will develop marketing materials for this group, can also do a press release about the event- get some press from having Nurses Day at legislature- Nurses concerned about safe patient care and better health for our citizens- Have a subtag for the title- could have a hashtag for twitter and facebook etc.
• Could make some buttons/stickers- identify themselves as a nurse- When nurses talk, legislators listen.
• Sponsors- what do we want to offer sponsors? Recognition on materials to participants? How many sponsors do we want? Fundraising group is going to work on sponsors for all of our events

• Draft Agenda: Will not have access to other meeting space at the capitol. All room reservations are locked during the session. Would have to ask the Speaker of the House for a space.

7:30 AM – 8:00 AM Exhibitor Setup and Registration

8:00 AM- 9:00 AM Welcome Huddle- provide handouts with legislative priorities of Center and organizations- brief explanation. Overview of day. Provide a map of where legislators sit and encourage each participant to approach at least one legislator today- talk about procedure. Provide list of committee meetings and bills of interest and information about afternoon session.

9:00 AM- 12:00 PM- Committee Hearings

9:00 AM- 1st Legislative Tour- Participants pre-register for tour

10:00 AM- 2nd Legislative Tour- participants pre-register for tour

10:30 AM- 12:00- Exhibits Open- participants invited to attend and interact with legislators

11:30 – 1:00 PM – Lunch at tables set up in same space as exhibit, extra chairs around booths to

encourage interaction

1:00- 3:30 - House and Senate Floor Sessions-sit in on sessions of interest

1:00 PM- 1st Capitol Tour- participants pre-register for tour

2:00 PM- 2nd Capitol Tour- participants pre-register for tour

2:00 – 3:30 PM- Possible Exhibit Time- interact with legislators

3:30- 4:00- Take down exhibits

• Status of RFP to hire research consultant. Will help develop policy brief to distribute during Nurses Day. Will work from September 1, 2014- March 1, 2015. $4,000 for research consultant, $1,000 for mapping consultant

1. Revise legislative policy report by updating graphs and tables and updating summaries. Add additional data as available. Provide mapping data to mapping consultant.
2. Develop new maps (mapping consultant)

2013 Policy Report

2013 Policy Brief

1. If time, Strategy:Continue communication with all nurses on legislative issues.

1. If time, Strategy: Develop communication strategy for linking sphere of influence members.

Plan next meetings in October, December and March? Meeting doodle to set up meeting in September in order to finish working through our agenda.

2014-2015 Workplan: Group Meetings in April, August, October, December, March

Strategies / Activities / Month/
Person(s) / Activity Completion Status
Provide interim and during session legislative monitoring and communication within leadership team. / Negotiate contract with legislative monitor and provide initial orientation. / April-July
Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Provide monthly or bi-monthly updates including notes on tracked committees/studies. Provide weekly updates during legislative session. / Ongoing
Legislative Monitor / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Schedule legislative update leadership team calls- September, December and then weekly during session on Fridays? / Ongoing
Patricia
Legislative Monitor / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Continue collaborative email groups for specific studies and add new ones based on bills that come forward / Ongoing
Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Develop legislative platform to determine which bills to track and increase targeted advocacy efforts. / August-December
Workgroup, Legislative Monitor, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Increase visibility of ND Center for Nursing and leadership team organizations at the state legislature through a Nurses Day. / Determine date for Nurses Day at the Legislature and schedule space. / April
Workgroup, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Develop and disseminate save the date materials for leadership team organizations. / April
Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Solicit partner organizations and sponsors and organize sub-committee. / June-July
Workgroup, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Develop agenda for day, other logistics and possible sponsors / August- October
Workgroup, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Develop policy brief describing work of center and current nursing data. Disseminate to legislators in conjunction with Nurses Day. / September- December
Patricia, Research Consultant, Mapping Consultant / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Develop marketing materials for legislators and market nurses day. / October- January
Kyle / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Hold Nurses Day / March
Workgroup, Patricia, Kyle / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Evaluate effectiveness of Nurses Day. / April-May
Workgroup, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Continue communication with all nurses on legislative issues. / Update advocacy center with legislative calendar and updated legislative tables. / Ongoing
Kyle / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Include monthly enewsletter article about legislative happenings and targeted summaries for studies/bills of interest. / Ongoing
Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Examine best practices on disseminating policy information to a wide range of organizations including rural nursing, state government and other entities. / August-December
Workgroup, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Develop communication strategy for linking sphere of influence members. / Continue to revise and complete Sphere of Influence list / Ongoing
Workgroup, Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Work on inclusion of nurses on key committees/boards through tracking board openings and encouraging submissions through enewsletter, facebook and collaborative email groups. / Ongoing
Workgroup,
Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
Pilot communication strategy for linking Sphere of Influence members with leadership team. / September-June
Workgroup,
Patricia / 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%
2015-2016
Evaluate effectiveness of legislative platform and communication strategies, continue interim monitoring and communication