NUR 2

TranscriptforsettingagendaWK1assignment.pdf

Setting the Agenda

Setting the Agenda Program Transcript FEMALE SPEAKER: How do you get a policymaker's attention? It's very simple. You develop a relationship with that person. Don't wait until you need something. Develop the relationship early on. [MUSIC PLAYING] FEMALE SPEAKER: Sometimes it's difficult to get issues on the agenda that are our issues, that might be an issue that's of interest to a nurse, if it doesn't align with the interests and the priorities of that elected official. So it's really important to know what their priorities are, what their health issues are that they're most interested in. You can usually Google their name. You can get their official bios. You can read about the committees that they serve on and the issues that matter to them. And look to see whether or not their agenda matches with yours, or if there's a way you can leverage your issue into their agenda. FEMALE SPEAKER: Know exactly what the congressional members have on their agenda. And you can get them online, through their local office, or through their congressional office in Washington, DC. Find out what they're interested in. Find out how you can help them. You need to call them up, or you need to go visit the office and find out exactly what is being done. FEMALE SPEAKER: Call up a state senator and say, I am so-and-so. I would like to meet with you. I'm a registered nurse. And I think I may have something that you might be interested to talk about. FEMALE SPEAKER: Do the homework you need to do to get up to speed, not just on the issue and a potential solution you may be advocating, but also their background so that you can calibrate your conversation with them in ways that will resonate for them, that they'll understand and appreciate. FEMALE SPEAKER: It's often helpful to have what is known as a policy entrepreneur. That's a big word that simply says, do you have anybody who's on your side or who's really interested or who can continue to work with your policymaker when you're out doing your own practice. It could be a retired legislator. It could be a current legislator, someone who's willing to support a bill and then could perhaps introduce your bill, because only legislators can introduce bills. The president cannot, the governor cannot. That's the purview of the General Assembly or the Congress. FEMALE SPEAKER: People want to hear from their constituents. Ideally, you are communicating with the people who represent you. So that's almost always the first place to start, your elected official, not the one two states over. That might be appealing, because you know their name from national news. And you certainly

Setting the Agenda

can communicate to them. But the voices that often matter the most, I've found, are the voices from local communities back home in the district or the state that that Senator or Congressman or state legislator represents. FEMALE SPEAKER: You have to make sure that you are in it for the long run. These kinds of political processes and policy issues may take years. So you say, oh, my gosh, are you on this forever. Sometimes it seems like it. It may take one session of two years. It may take two. It may take five sessions. But if it's important enough to you, you need to go. FEMALE SPEAKER: This particular meeting with the president was my coming over to the White House, because he'd asked me to meet with him. And he started by saying, Mary, I want to thank you for. And I did what people probably never should do and that my mother would have been very unhappy about my having done, I interrupted the President of the United States. And I did that because I thought I had something more important as a nurse to tell him than he had to tell me. So I had hijacked that meeting with him. And given that feedback, very quickly went through those programs that I thought were important for him to hear about, told him the impact, speaking as quickly as I am right now to convey that message. There is information that nurses are uniquely positioned, because of our expertise and our practice, to inform the work of policymakers. And you don't ever want to lose that opportunity to do just that, even when you're talking to the President of the United States. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Setting the Agenda Additional Content Attribution Trowell‐Harris, I. (n.d.). Various Photographs [Photograph]. Used with permission of Irene Trowell-Harris. Wakefield, M. (n.d.). [Photograph]. Used with permission og Mary Wakefield WAL_NURS6050_NIH-SenatorDanielInouye Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Setting the Agenda