It is four o'clock, so we are going to get started on the next portion of the chapter officer orientation, and this one's on public policy and legislation. I'm going to go over our disclosures. All of you now know how important this slide is based on our last presentation. So the presenters have no conflicts of interest. The International Association of Forensic Nurses is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development, and you do need to complete your evaluation at the end of this course. Today's presenters are going to be myself, and then our two policy advisors from the Pulse Ameli firm, Tim Perrin and Sylvia Korngay, and Sylvia is racing from another meeting, so she'll be here in a little bit, but Tim, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, absolutely. Hi, Tim Perrin. I'm one of the policy advisors here at Pulse Ameli. Oh, there's Sylvia. Hey, Sylvia, we're just introducing ourselves very quickly. We're so excited to work with IAFN and have really enjoyed, we started in December and have, you know, I mean, it was like a shot out of a cannon with bio-reauthorization just right after that. So we're really excited and we're definitely hitting the ground running and looking forward to talking to you a little bit more. Sylvia? Hey, good afternoon. Sorry, I joined a couple of minutes late. Sylvia Korngay with Pulse Ameli. I work with Tim. I'm sure Tim covered a lot of it, but we are very excited any time we get the chance to talk to IAFN memberships, so this is a real treat for us and we look forward to your questions at the end as well. Excellent. I hope you got a chance to breathe between meetings, Sylvia. We are all set, yes. Good. All right, so today we are hoping that you walk away with an increased knowledge of our current federal legislative priorities for forensic nurses and that you will have a better understanding of the legislative process and opportunities at the state level, your local level, and that you will have an increased understanding of responsibilities as chapters in monitoring state legislation. So a little bit of how to do all of these things. And I just want to pause and say that we do have the chat available. If you do want to come off mute, I really encourage you to raise your hands. We would love to have discussion as we go through, and there is also the question and answer box for participation, so please feel free to use those tools at any time throughout the presentation. So many of you are familiar with the three main chapter goals. The first is to provide education. The second is to provide to do public policy work, and the third is membership recruitment and engagement. Today we're really going to be focusing on public policy. Generally, a lot of times our chapters also include not only legislative work but statewide protocols, that kind of thing under this policy tab, I guess. In order to do legislation work, there's a lot of different things that chapters can do in this area, and I'm going to give some examples on the next slide, but you do need to have approval from the International Association of Forensic Nurses. So as Tim and Sylvia talk in a little while, they're going to talk about how identifying legislation, right? So if there's legislation identified and that legislation says we are changing, this is happening in Alaska right now, they're changing the definition of consent, right? And so that's going to have a lot of implications. If as a chapter you want to do something with that legislation, if you wanted to say yes, we're in support of it or no, we're not in support of it, you really need to know what the legislation says. Sometimes there's a lot of nuances in the legislation that the marketing around it looks one way, but maybe the reality of the way it would impact patients looks a different way, but the chapter's job is to identify that legislation locally and then understand what the legislation says, form a position, right? So as a board you'll meet, you'll talk about it, you'll say yes, we are in support of this legislation, we think that, you know, broadening the definition of consent to include, you know, multiple forms of coercion and harassment, including verbal, is a good thing. You would come to us and you would say that, you know, we want to support this. You're going to give me a link to the actual legislation because we will be reading it and a quick summary of what your decision is locally, why you support it or why you don't. And then depending on the legislation, how clear it is and how clear the ask is, we will either be sending approval or we will set up a meeting for more information and clarification. And sometimes we'll have some strategy conversations at that meeting depending on what you want to do or what you want to achieve. After the meeting or after kind of an initial, yep, we agree that this is a good thing to do, the chapter will do an initial draft of whatever they want to put out. If that's a statement, if that is testimony, the chapter will do an initial draft and send it to us. Again, we will read it, we will edit, comment, and then we'll return it to the chapter and then the chapter and then we will, you will return it to us once you've incorporated all your edits into it as a chapter. The board has to approve it and then we'll just review and approve whatever the final is. It's going to have your logo on it so that needs to get approved as well. So depending on what we're looking at, this process can be pretty involved. One of the things about legislation is that it's frequently very last minute. It's very fast moving. So whenever you reach out to us, please let us know what your timeframes are. We do want to help you achieve your goals even when they are quick timeframes, but please be clear with us about what you need and when you need it so we can prioritize internally because there are multiple people who are involved in this. Do we have any questions so far? I'm just gonna look over at the chat. So there are a couple examples of recent work that the chapters have done and this is just really to provide a base for those of you who are doing it. I think we have, I think it's 13 chapters that are actively engaged in policy work, so about half of the chapters right now are doing this. We would really like to see all of the chapters doing this work even if by doing this work you're right now your first year to three years and doing this work is really just monitoring what's going on at the local level. That way you can become more informed and engaged. So Ohio has done a couple different proponent testimonies where they have either submitted written testimony or they have gone to their state house and provided oral testimony and they've given testimony to remove statute of limitations. They've given testimony to make strangulation a felony. Ohio also produced a joint statement with a local forensic nursing organization on the availability of forensic nurses and that was really directed at hospital leadership advocating for support of their forensic nursing programs. In Pennsylvania, we recently drafted, they did a great job, all of you have done a great job doing this, they drafted opposition testimony on a bill related to duplicating and changing mandatory reporting requirements for pediatric sexual assault. Wisconsin, and this is an example where Wisconsin, the Wisconsin chapter made a position statement in support of a statement that their coalition made, their statewide sexual assault coalition. They didn't write a state, they didn't write a position statement, they didn't do that, but they, and they, I think they actually posted this on social media and on their website. So this was something that even though they said the chapter approves and supports X, it was a simple statement that was something that they had to work with us around. In Virginia, we met with the commonwealth attorneys so that, and the statewide coordinator, and that was a really great meeting. It was a strategy meeting, what did they need, were there action items that came out of it, and you know, it was a lot of information sharing. In Illinois, there was a letter to the Illinois General Assembly Appropriations Committee seeking amendments related to billing on proposed legislation, and in Ohio and New York, we wrote letters to governors to say that services were opening during the early COVID surge, and those were significant. I think they were actually read out loud at some of the statewide meetings around COVID. Some of the chapters are also sending out action alerts to their members, and this is just an example of what that looks like, and some of these can just be FYIs, like, hey, did you know the session is in, and there is legislation that impacts forensic nursing, and you know, we talked about it on Monday, but the legislation that we're really trying to track with the intention of understanding, you know, do forensic nurses have support to practice in this state, is what is the access to care, and what's the cost of care, right, and so these are really the main goals around looking at legislation, but here's a great example. Our members do want to know what's going on in their state. We also have the Government Affairs Committee here at IAFN, and a lot of chapters are having a Government Affairs Committee liaison, so one of your chapter officers is a designated member of the Government Affairs Committee, so they attend that meeting monthly, and that helps because then they know what's going on at the national level as far as legislation is, and they can report out to the chapter, so the chapter knows how to get involved, or they can report out to their larger chapter membership if you have upcoming meetings, and I think this is another opportunity, too, right, where the chapters sometimes are, I don't want to use the word, the term reinventing the wheel, but if you know what's going on, you're more likely to share when Melissa posts the action alerts on social media, right, so if you're the more informed you are, you can kind of become part of that ecosystem and share with confidence, right, so you don't have to create new content if this is something that's already out there. Any member can join at any time, and we do have a discussion here about state legislation, so if your chapter is aware of state legislation and you want to ask questions about whether or not similar things have taken place in other states and how they've responded or strategized, this is a great opportunity to do that, and any member can put a topic on the agenda for the upcoming month, so I absolutely invite you to come to that. Tim and Sylvia, who you're going to hear from soon, do start that meeting every month with a federal update, and it's thorough, and it's wonderful, and some of the things we're working on federally really do directly affect what's going on in your state, so it's a really good way to just stay connected. And then I'm going to put a plug here for Advocacy Day, so this is going to be on February 22nd, 2023, and part of the reason why this is part of your chapter office orientation now is because we really hope that all of the chapters attend Advocacy Day in 2023. It is a great opportunity to connect to other members. It's a great opportunity to network. A lot of chapters do have scholarships to attend. They'll send a board officer as well as a member, or they'll have the scholarships open for members. The training itself is free this day, but members do pay for their own travel and lodging, so having chapter support for this can be really critical in order for members to attend, and what is really significant here for the chapters is that you will be able to meet some of your state legislators, and so you're building those relationships, so if something comes up, the chapter speaks for forensic nurses in your state, and we frequently actually recently have gotten a couple calls that Tim and Sylvia have facilitated where at the national level we've talked to committee members or staffers on various topics, and it's really great if they know who to reach out to, right? They know this legislation is going to impact you, and they want to hear from you about your perspective on it for their state. It can be really significant and kind of change the course or expand the legislation that they're working on. I'm trying to think if there's anything else, and yeah, last year we had a couple chapters where they couldn't attend the officers themselves, but they did a good service for their state, so I think Deb in Pennsylvania, I'll give you a kudos. You coordinated all of the meetings for everybody in Pennsylvania, even though you personally couldn't attend, which was great. It was really, I think, helpful, so that was another service that the chapter provided to the local members, and I think that really helped. We have a comment here from Carrie. I love advocacy days. We love them too, so we really appreciate that, and we really love when I think having people here, it's a really, it's kind of a really intimate environment to get to know other members and work on some really significant things, so I jumped ahead because I got really excited about our priorities. We talked about our vision on Monday, and we talked about it a lot, which is great, but I think just talking about this is important because we can't predict every single scenario that's going to come up in every single state, and we can't predict either the way that it's going to impact what happens in your state specifically, right? There might be some things in New Hampshire that work really well in our state that would really not work in Alaska or California. The resources are different. The layout's different, right, so we really need to partner the state and national to make sure that we have this cohesive message around our vision, our mission, our values, but that we're working together towards these specific pieces of legislation, and again, so we're really looking at cost of care, access to care, and quality of care. Tim and Sylvia, do you have anything you wanted to add when we talked about our priorities? Yeah, I can chime in. I think as Christina pointed out, it'll be virtually impossible to predict what one state is going to do, let alone a number of different states, so there are a couple of questions that we just encourage you to consider as this legislation pops up and you're trying to figure out what your advocacy role should be, and I think the first one is very basic but still helpful to really concretely determine how is this legislation specific to the forensic nursing profession. Again, that's a very basic question, but seeing as how you all are experts in this field, you'd be surprised how a direct question like that might be met with a little bit of a head scratcher or you don't have an immediate response, so I think just being really able to concisely answer that and explain why you are the experts in this room and why your opinions on this bill should be listened to is really important, and just one of the other ones that we came up with is really also trying to capture to what extent is the issue state versus federally specific, because as we're looking at legislative or even regulatory fixes for that matter, I think there's always the question of is what one state is doing able to be replicated to a region or is this something that requires federal action as well. Tim, I don't know if you want to chime in with a couple of other thoughts on this question. Well, just sometimes looking to neighboring states where, especially if you're in a border area, and sometimes neighboring states are sharing the same issues and challenges, and it just offers an opportunity to gather and garner a stronger voice as you advocate before policymakers. Excellent. Well, thank you. Does anybody have any questions or thoughts? I just want to pause and make sure that we're happy to include you. Sometimes there's a little delay in the typing, but so Tim and Sylvia are going to take over and talk about our federal legislative priorities. All right. So, Christina, I can't see the slides, so I assume I'll just tell you to advance them? Yes, that would work. All right, good. That's technology. You can see the PowerPoint, right? No. Oh my goodness, I'm sitting here. You can't see the PowerPoint. Oh, there we go, great. Well, I apologize for everybody. I thought that I was sharing the correct screen here. But yes, I will be happy to advance yours. As long as we didn't see cat videos or something, you weren't sharing those, that's all good. Some people might have rather have seen cat videos. I apologize if there is someone on the call who would have preferred that. Well, listen, thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you all. And we are really grateful for the opportunity to be able to represent this association in Washington, DC. It's an honor and a privilege and really an exciting set of issues. And man, it's so fun to work on issues that are being talked about and are really important. And so this slide really gets to where we are working currently and where we've spent a tremendous amount of time and talent just really ensuring that the interests of forensic nurse examiners are heard with policymakers, that the policy solutions and policy tweaks of the solutions that are already out there, that they are heard and that we're able to move the needle to, one, increase access to forensic nurse examiners throughout the country. And two, recruit more and make sure that everyone has the best training and is operating at the highest standard possible. So you're going to hear that theme repeated a whole lot. So for those of you playing office bingo, I guess one of the words would be relationships and increased access. That would be another one. So all right, let me jump into these issues here. So first of all, like I started off saying, Sylvia and I started working with you all in December. And the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization process was starting to get some momentum and really picked up in the new year. And this is such a significant win for the association, but also for patients and for individuals who are suffering from violence and assault. It was enacted this spring. It was included in a very large legislative vehicle, the fiscal 2022 Omnibus Appropriations Bill. That's really not important. What's important is that VAWA was reauthorized. And what that legislation did was authorize and reauthorize grant funding for both existing programs and new programs within the department, the US Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services. But most of that, the lion's share is really in DOJ. And the goals of the reauthorization bill were, you know, like I was saying, to increase the number of forensic nurse examiners throughout the country, make forensic nurse examiners more available and more accessible, and to invest in training, recruiting, and retaining the workforce. The VAWA reauthorization also included two priorities, two association priorities. One was SASCA and the SANE Act, both of these. And we've talked a lot about these, and we can answer more questions or get more into the weeds. But really, at the core, VAWA, writ large, was about getting more federal resources aimed at forensic nurse examiners and making sure that access is increased. So now that bill was passed earlier this spring in March. And so it is now being implemented by the Department of Justice and by the Department of Health and Human Services. And so that's really an important function for us to continue advocacy. Just because a bill is passed doesn't mean that advocacy is over. Yes, we take a victory lap. Yes, we'll spike the football in the end zone, and we'll high-five and slap ourselves on the back and all that stuff. But it's really important to make sure that the federal agencies are implementing this legislation as a new law, as it is intended by Congress. So we continue to work with now the administration as they are figuring out how to get this federal money to the states. And so that's a really important function for us to pay attention to and to continue the advocacy momentum. All right, moving on. So like I said, I'm sorry, Christina, still on. I'm on a roll. I'm like Belushi in Animal House. I'm sorry. I make a lot of jokes, sorry. And they're all old jokes. On this fiscal 2022 appropriations, that was the big vehicle. But in that big vehicle that included VAWA reauthorization, in that big vehicle there was a provision that established a forensic nurse center of excellence. And this is a common thing for Congress to do where they want to focus resources on resources at developing best practices for an industry and also encouraging and just supporting an industry. I use that industry in little i. It could be a population such as forensic nurse examiners. So here, Congress really wanted to develop forensic nurse examiner best practices and, again, increase that access to forensic nurse examiners by encouraging recruiting, training, and retaining. IAFN led a letter with 21 other forensic nurse organizations in support of this. And this provision in the appropriations bill was in the House bill. But I think because of our advocacy, it was a very easy thing for that to just be accepted when the Senate was considering this. So this is a big victory. And it just really shows how advocacy is important. Moving down to the telehealth here. Again, I don't have to tell you, telehealth was one of those issues and functions that emerged as a silver lining of the COVID pandemic. Just allowing providers to provide care to patients across state lines and having the federal government remove some of those restrictions was really helpful in increasing access. And that was certainly true for forensic nurse examiners and patient-seeking care. Telehealth is so important with increasing accessibility in rural and underserved areas. And right now, as we still continue as a federal government under a public health emergency, a lot of those restrictions still remain lifted. At some point, the public health emergency is going to end. And that's where Congress and the administration, this is a bipartisan, bicameral Congress and executive branch and legislative branch, this is a priority for everybody, is how to figure out how to best harness telehealth services. And we've got a great, in the TeleSafe and TeleSANE programs, we've got a great example of how that can work. So that's something that we are keeping track of and watching very closely as policymakers are figuring out how to best move the needle forward on telehealth past a public health emergency. And just finally, on Indian Health Services, this is another focus for IAFN and increasing access to forensic nurse examiners on tribal lands. There was funding and grant funding included in VAWA. And this is also a priority for the Biden administration, directing funds in the president's budget that he released in March, just gave a tremendous boost to Indian Health Services. And so we are working to ensure that the tribal governments, tribal organizations are able to tap into that. This administration, more than any other in the past, is really emphasizing by putting their money where their mouth is, right? Where they're emphasizing the need to ensure equitable access to healthcare. And one of those priority areas for the administration is within the tribal areas and tribal governments. And so that's something that, again, we are watching very closely. All right, Christina, now next slide. Okay, so when I got married, my mother-in-law said, you know, Tim, I wish you were a carpenter because I don't really understand what a lobbyist is. And, you know, I just pointed my mother-in-law to the First Amendment. You know, my job is right here in the First Amendment to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Now I'm making light of my job. My job is very important, I know. But your job as an advocate, and maybe not a full-time advocate, but your job as an advocate and raising your voice and joining with other voices is so important. This is legitimate. This is really First Amendment stuff. And this is, you know, if we don't share with the federal government, if we don't share with the state governments, we don't share with policymakers what we do or what you do, they won't know. By and large, they are generalists. Sometimes you find someone who has a background in this, maybe out of the advocacy community, maybe somebody out of the nursing corps. Corps, you know, sometimes you have somebody who understands, a policymaker that understands the issues, but by and large, most of them don't. And so it is imperative for you to weigh in, get involved. And the First Amendment gives you that right. And how cool is it to say that you have a First Amendment job? I think it's cool. All right, Christina, next slide. Okay, so on the state level, really important to understand what's going on with your state government. It's not always the same. There's a lot of parallels to the federal government, but it's not always identical. And it really takes a little bit of time to do a little bit of homework to understand what's going on. So who are the key players, right? Who's the governor? Who's the lieutenant governor? What kind of, you know, we have here the dynamic between the governor and the legislature. That's so important because some states have a very strong governorship or, you know, governorship, and other states have a weak governorship so that the power rests more in the state legislature. Understanding that dynamic is really key. You know, where do the state agencies that get federal funding, where are those housed within, you know, in the org chart? Where are they in the org chart? Is it under the executive branch? Are they separate entities? Understanding where those are and, you know, developing relationships there and weighing in with those offices is really important. Understanding when the governor's up for re-election or when legislators are up for re-election, you know, some state legislatures meet every other year. Some state senates, you know, don't elect their senators every single year, or every two years, maybe every four years. So understanding what those terms, legislative terms look like and executive branch terms look like, that's important. And, you know, how long is the state, you know, General Assembly, like, how long does the legislature meet? Often states will come in in January, and they can be out by Memorial Day, and that's pretty fast. So you have to have your ducks in a row going into those legislative terms. You know, developing relationships on the state, in smaller states, it's maybe a little bit easier. In bigger states, it's still, politics is local. So getting to know your own legislators, your own representatives, that's so key. And developing those relationships is critical to being able to effectively communicate, but just having a foot in the door to be able to say, hey, well, I wanna just, I wanna, I have some concerns about this, or I have some thoughts on how to improve this, this policy proposal. Next slide. I think this next slide's really kind of funny. And, you know, for those of us who have been through high school civics class, for those of us who are old and grew up under Schoolhouse Rock, Schoolhouse Rock was great because it gave you just such a good, by the book, how a bill becomes a law. But this slide's a little bit more accurate. And it's sometimes a hot mess, not gonna lie. So you can look at it there, but often the process is convoluted. The stakeholders, you know, everybody has their own perspective. And because of social media, they share their perspective. So you have a lot of competing priorities. And, you know, the legislative process is integrally linked with the implementation process. So it's important to look at these policy campaigns, if you will, in a holistic way. And always be clear and always, you know, keep that message going because that frequency of the drumbeat. Back in the days of terrestrial radio, you remember you'd be driving in the car listening to the radio, and it's the same commercial after, you know, constantly on there. And the reason is frequency matters. And so sharing your message, getting out there, talking about it frequently matters. And this day and age, you've got to cut through a lot of noise to ensure that you actually get the tire swing that you wanted. So Sylvia, I think I'm handing the baton off to you. Or do I have one more slide? No, I think I'm up. Yeah, thanks, Tim. So we're going to move to slide 17 now, Christina. We intro this on a previous slide. Now we're going to dig a little bit deeper. A critical component of advocacy and public policy, as you can imagine, is becoming familiar with the legislative process within your state. Let me just assure you from the start that no, you do not need to become an expert in rules and procedure, or know each and every committee like the back of your hand, or memorize the name of every single state representative and the area they represent. Our intention here is just to give you a few tools and tips on what to look for as you're reading about and listening to your state officials and trying to figure out how to take that next bigger step into advocacy. The idea is really to arm yourself with some basic information that'll help you approach the legislatures and inform citizen and make contributions in your outreach and discussions with officials and staff. So that being said, let's start going through some of these, starting with schedules. First, as Tim mentioned, find out when your legislature is in session and the schedule in which they operate. Unlike the U.S. Congress, and I think the states actually do it better in this case, most state legislatures, as Tim said, are only in session for part of the year, meaning the time during which they're at the state capitol taking votes and participating in committee hearings. And depending on the state, officials may come back for special legislative sessions to consider items that previously didn't get a chance to be considered, like amendments to a state budget or supplemental funding requests. Some state legislatures also may be active in the months before formal session, during which they're teeing up bills for introduction or compiling a legislative agenda. A lot of this work is done at the staff level and reps and senators may be working on submitting legislative language to be considered when the House and Senate reconvene. Moving on to key players. Now, I said earlier that you don't need to memorize entire committee rosters or directories, and that's absolutely true, but there are a few key players that you should get to know and follow. These include your own state rep and senator, of course, officials who represent the district where you work, and the leadership of the state House and Senate. And again, hearkening back to our earlier slide, it's helpful to understand which party controls each chamber and whether your hometown officials, for instance, are in the majority or the minority. Additionally, you may want to research whether any healthcare providers by training currently serve as a rep or senator and would consider becoming a champion for forensic nurses and the survivors that you serve. Third, forensic nursing sites and programs. This is a data point that allows you to become a resource to officials and their staff. Having information at your fingertips on the location of forensic nursing training sites or facilities is extremely valuable to offices, particularly if you know ahead of time who represents those districts. For those of you who have participated in this year's DC advocacy event, you may recall hearing Tim and I talk about how much more the data resonates when you can tie it to a particular district or group of constituents. Lastly, take the time to familiarize yourself with which committees in the House and Senate work on your issues so that you're able to focus your efforts. Forensic nursing and sexual assault straddle healthcare and justice issues, so find out which committees have jurisdiction over both and what they're called. As an example at the federal level, the main committees we watch in Congress are the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, as well as the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Senate, which is abbreviated the Health Committee. In the House, we also pay attention to the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has some jurisdiction over healthcare issues, as well as the Education and Labor Committee. Of course, these committees will have different names and be organized slightly differently in each state, so we really do encourage you to look these up. Next slide, please. So now that you've gotten to know your state legislature better and how it operates, the next step is learning to identify relevant state legislation, and one of the best ways to do this is by going directly to the source and monitoring committee proceedings and announcements from sponsors. Most state legislatures actually do a really excellent job of posting legislative text and committee announcements in a clear and timely manner, and some legislatures, actually Illinois and Ohio come to mind in particular, also will post information online about outside organizations that have registered their support for opposition to specific bills and even will include testimony submitted for the record. You can typically find this information by going to You can typically find this information by going to the state house or senate website and entering relevant search terms, but once you have a sense of key committees to watch, you can also go directly to the committees of jurisdiction and monitor new bills that specifically have been referred to those committees. So one question that we often get is, how do I make sense of what the bill does? The good news is that there are a lot of official resources at your disposal to help you decipher what's in a bill without having to digest legalese. Many states actually have a non-partisan legislative service commission or office that'll issue a summary and short analysis of the bill, and at the federal level, we rely on similar resources like the congressional research service, the congressional budget office, and even the government accountability office, which serves as an auditor of federal programs. Now while some of these reports may have sections that dig into the weeds on things like budget, economic impact, or the interplay with other state laws, they typically provide concise and easy-to-read summaries to acquaint you with the bill's overall goals and key provisions. Moving on, another way to identify state legislation is to sign in for e-news alerts from committee and party leadership announcing bill introductions and major initiatives. You can commit to making civics your side gig by reading the news and building it into your routine, and an additional bonus of receiving regular press releases in your inbox from bill sponsors is that many of them will include short bulleted summaries of new legislation, as well as quotes from organizations that have endorsed these bills, and this is really valuable and a great way to keep tabs on the level of support for a new initiative. We also encourage you to rely on your existing networks to help notify and inform you of state legislation. These may include local advocacy networks, professional organizations, academics, or legislative experts who meet virtually or in person to share information about what they're working on, and again, I'm sure a lot of you are already active in these groups, like I have been, but at your local level. These interactions do not have to be mission-oriented every single time, meaning that you don't have to pick up intel at every gathering, but they can be really helpful for spotting trends or identifying areas of interest where stakeholders want to elevate items to the attention of their elected officials. And then finally, don't forget to establish contact with your state rep and senator and get on their email lists. Hearing from them regularly, even if it's only through their newsletters or press releases, will be extremely beneficial background if and when you meet with their offices one day. Next slide, please. So now we'll tie this all together by looking at avenues for exercising your right to advocate and influence policy, and we'll start with power of the pen. There are various ways to get your position on the record and in front of staff and officials. A couple of these include, for instance, an action alert to chapter members, which I know Christina talked about earlier, similar to the alerts that IFN has sent out in the past few months. These are quick notifications alerting your partners of news they need to know, either contain a time-sensitive call to action or announce breaking news. Both types of alerts are beneficial, and they help reflect to your members that you're constantly in the loop and communicating with them, and hopefully these alerts will encourage your members to reciprocate and stay involved. Other options for engaging in print include submitting formal testimony in support of or opposition to a bill, issuing a position statement on a topic, and a letter to the editor of your state and local print or online publications. I'm going to spend a minute about pounding the pavement as well, and when we think of more personal or relational advocacy opportunities, we're of course thinking about asking for a virtual or in-person meeting, and it's important to recognize that these meetings can either be proactive or reactive, and there is an appropriate time for each. For instance, it's perfectly okay to ask for a brief intro meeting if you've never contacted your hometown officials and you're interested only in making that first foray into their office, and typically the purpose of that meeting would just to educate them about who you are, what you do, and the value of the service you provide to the community and their constituents. I would also recommend, you know, don't be afraid to ask them for a preview of what they're working on in this space or what the legislature plans to address in the next session, and at the end, most importantly, just reaffirm to them your interest in keeping the dialogue open and serving as a technical resource whenever they come across forensic nursing or issues dealing with sexual assault in health care. Also consider reaching out to your partners to see if they'd lend their name to your letter of position statement or would be willing to join you in a meeting. Not only would this amplify your message, but it would signal to officials that you're a convener in this space and an excellent resource who's plugged in and also, importantly, able to mobilize others. Lastly, I really don't want to be that person, particularly Wednesday afternoon, but it seems like we're never too far away from the campaign season, and regardless of whether you love or hate election politics, do keep in mind that there may be additional opportunities on the campaign trail to get to know current as well as future officials. These can include campaign town halls, roundtables, or even fundraisers if you're so inclined, and that's certainly not a requirement. Again, these are other avenues to get some face time with key stakeholders while expanding your circle of contacts to include campaign or political staff because you never know where these contacts may land in an official capacity one day, and chances are that you may cross paths with some of these campaign operatives again in the future. With that, Christina, we'll turn it back over to you. I'm going to mute myself. Well, thank you. I think that's really informative. Does anybody have any questions? We do have a question. How difficult is it to amend a state statute, and what are suggested first steps to do so? Are new statutes needed to amend other statutes? Before we answer this question, it does say anonymous, so if you would put your name in the chat, I just want to make sure that you get credit for your attendance, and that has to do with the CEs just to make sure that we know who you are that you're here. Just to jump in, I want to make sure I'm understanding the question correctly. Essentially, if you see a legislative fix that you would like to propose, what are the steps for going through something like that? Does that capture it? Well, I think to kick things off, number one, make sure you have a firm understanding of what the issue is and also the context in which it's being discussed. You know, one of the previous slides, we talked a little bit about some of the items you should consider when you're thinking about whether to get involved, and I think a lot of those questions still resonate. Number one, being able to put into context the effect on forensic nursing. I think number two, the more familiar you are with the existing law, the better, and again, you know, understanding you don't need to have a JD or, you know, a formal degree to be able to go through this, but I think having some idea of where to pinpoint this, whether it's which committee of jurisdiction is dealing with this, is there a current bill they're discussing where you think an amendment would be, you know, really convenient to slip in, and then finally, to the extent that you can kind of put pen to paper, doesn't have to be perfect legislative language, but to start, even a brief summary of what you think the issue should be and what the perspective fix should be, and then there's a whole other political dimension to this as well, and maybe, Tim, this is where I kick it over to you to talk about that. Well, yeah, I mean, there are lots of tools that can come into play, and, you know, sometimes we look at advocacy as a three-legged stool, right, you know, one being the actual policy that you want to change in your policy solution, the other being grassroots effort, right, getting others to weigh in and demonstrate that this is a problem that needs to be solved, or that this solution is the best solution, and then there's the political leg of the stool, which really comes into play. I mean, this is a relational effort, right, and if you, you never know who knows whom and how those relationships can be leveraged, and sometimes somebody knows a policymaker because they have made a tremendous amount of political contributions to that person, to that candidate. Sometimes it's, you know, brother-in-law or sister-in-law of somebody who's the policymaker, so, you know, they're the bringing all three of those legs of the stool together, and the analogy, you know, if you play it out, if you only have two of those legs, the stool is not stable. For those of us who have actually stood on a three-legged stool, we all know that three-legged stool is not stable at all anyway, so I do not recommend standing on a three-legged stool, but for the purposes of the analogy, it's good enough to sit on. Yeah, that's excellent, and that's another area where if your chapter does identify something like a statute change, you know, reach out to us. We're really happy to make sure that, you know, you have a strategy in place, and sometimes it's a multi-year strategy if your chapter doesn't have those relationships, right? That might be part of what we discuss, and sometimes we'll pull Tim and Sylvia into the discussions depending on, you know, where you are in the process, and again, whoever the anonymous attendee is, please put your name somewhere. That way, you can get credit for being on the webinar if you signed in as anonymous, and I'm talking to whoever asked this question. You know, we won't be able to identify you first for you to receive this EE. So back to the PowerPoint. This is just a social media post of an example. Jen was quoted in a couple different times around VAWA legislation because we worked really closely with a couple different offices, but we really want to highlight, too, Tim was just saying our relationships with different offices. So Markowski was a great partner in working to pass VAWA, and so we really want to make sure that when things like this come out, we highlight it, but this is an example of something that you can all post as well to your social media pages. And then we're going to pause for questions. So does anybody else have any other questions? Is there anything that your chapter is working on right now that you're kind of thinking that you might need to come back and have some more conversations with us about? Hey, Christina, while we're waiting for questions to come in, you know, one thing to keep in mind is that there's no one textbook way to make policy changes. Sometimes you have to be really creative, and so don't be scared of thinking outside the box, and sometimes those are the most effective means of bringing about a policy change is by being creative. Thank you. Yeah, and I think, too, the other thing is that sometimes the answer isn't always legislative. So that's another thing that sometimes we strategize around. People kind of have problems that they see in practice or in other areas, and, you know, sometimes we wish that those things didn't happen, but maybe the answers are really elsewhere, and so that's another thing that we would discuss is, you know, is this the best way to actually achieve the goals that we want, or is there another avenue? So it looks like we don't have any questions here, but I really appreciate, Tim, Sylvia, thank you so much for coming and sharing information. Again, I will say that if you do have questions as a chapter or you want more information about what this looks like, the state legislation, Tim and Sylvia can come to one of our roundtables and do like a little deeper dive like we were talking about for all the other topics we've covered this week. A 10 or 15 minute, this is a snippet, and sometimes that short focused information is just a different way to receive it, so please let us know if there's follow-up on something you'd like to discuss with them or talk about, and thank you all so much for bearing with us for six hours of chapter orientation this week. It has been really useful. I appreciate that all of you've been here, and those of you who have participated, thank you, and some of you have already sent questions and emails to follow up, so I really appreciate that, too. We really do want to make sure that you have the resources you need as chapter officers to provide a great service to your members, and we really do want to work with you and help support you to make that happen, so I hope it's clear to you throughout this week that our relationship with the chapters really is one of being supportive, and we really are looking forward to not only a great 2022, but a great couple of next and a great future years as well. I think the chapters have been doing such great work, especially over the past few years, and we're really looking forward to that continuing, so thank you all so much, and thanks for everything you're doing. We really appreciate it. Have a good afternoon.

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