Advocacy Guru Offers Residents, Medical Students Tips on Communicating With Legislators

Residents and medical students have busy schedules, but politicians may be even busier. For advocates who get a chance to communicate with their legislators, they usually only have minutes to impart their message, said Stephanie Vance, co-founder of Advocacy Associates in Washington.

Vance, author of Government by the People: How to Communicate with Congress, was one of the featured speakers during the National Conference of Family Medicine Residents and Medical Students here on July 30-Aug. 1. She urged her audience to make time to follow the news and understand how government affects health care.

Find out what issues are important to your elected representatives and relate them to your own cause, said Vance. And, she added, that should be easy for medical students and residents because "You can tie health care to anything."

To prove her point, Vance asked audience members to give her examples of issues seemingly unrelated to health care. One suggestion was transportation. Vance said medical professionals could draw a legislator focused on transportation issues into a discussion on health care by pointing out that transportation issues can affect access to health care. This in turn, could affect that elected official's constituents.

Similarly, she said, a politician interested in technology might be open to a discussion about electronic health records.

"Frame your message," she said. "Talk about what they want to talk about."

Vance also said it was important to realize that friends, family and staff members all have influence with legislators. "Who do you know?" she asked. "Who are you connected to? One of the first steps of advocacy is to understand ... who is in your network."

In addition, legislators are more likely to respond to a specific request than attempts to educate them about a specific issue, said Vance. There are two types of requests: policy requests, such as asking for support for a bill, and relationship-building requests, such as a request to make a statement or speech or visit a site, she added.

Vance encouraged students and residents to invite legislators to their schools or residency programs. Inviting them back again is a good idea, as well.

"You have to look at advocacy as a long-term thing," she said. "It's about building relationships to the point that (your legislators) wind up agreeing with you."

Vance also emphasized that advocates should make it clear that they live, work and serve in a legislator's district when they meet with him or her. "You have another avenue of influence besides money," she said. "You all have a powerful voice. Not just you, but the people in your school and your patients."

She added that it also is important to avoid things that don't influence politicians, such as logic. Although that might sound like a joke, Vance said polls and statistics -- especially those with national, as opposed to local, results -- have little effect if a politician thinks his or her constituents have a different opinion.

"It has to connect locally," she said.

Other tips Vance offered when visiting a legislator in his or her office included

Finally, Vance said, persistence is critical.

"That is what separates effective advocates from those that are not effective," she said.