The Academy has further ramped up its governmental advocacy activities with the launch of a state legislative tracking system that provides virtually live updates on bills working their way through state capitols.
Constituent chapters will identify the issues and bills of interest to their members and contact the AAFP's state government relations staff, who will load the information into the tracking system. Legislation entered can be tagged with summaries of the bill, links to AAFP policy on the issue covered by the bill and information on whether the chapter supports or opposes the bill.
"The system will proactively let chapters know any time a bill that is of interest to the chapter moves in the (state) legislature," said Diana Ewert, AAFP senior manager of state government relations. "This gives constituent chapters a tool to more easily track legislation and advocate for family medicine interests in state legislatures."
The result will be more nimble and flexible responses to legislation that affects family physicians at the state level. That capability comes at a time when the number of bills introduced in state capitols has skyrocketed. Many states opened their legislative prefiling in early December, and already, AAFP and chapter and staff have begun tracking 1,317 bills in 18 states, said Ewert.
The sheer volume of bills introduced on the state level -- nearly 93,000 anticipated in 2006 -- makes it a huge challenge just to sort through them to identify those that are health-related in general and family medicine-related in particular.
The system also will enable AAFP and constituent chapters to track trends in state legislation by allowing searches of specific issues across all states. Access the tracking system (Members Only) online.
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