Chapter 1
Advocacy Is Essential to Supporting and Advancing Oncology Nursing Priority Policies and Programs

During the past 20 years, health and consumer-based organizations have incorporated public policy and advocacy into their missions and principal activities. They have seen the gains that can be attained through such initiatives. For example, the HIV/AIDS activism of the 1980s and the breast cancer movement of the 1990s are well-known, tangible examples of what organizations and communities can achieve if they choose to allocate human and financial resources to affect public policies. Both causes have benefited from increases in research and programmatic funding for efforts to reduce and prevent the incidence, morbidity, and mortality of breast cancer and HIV/AIDS. For oncology nursing and broader cancer issues to begin to receive the attention, public policy response, and funding they deserve, oncology nurses must engage in proactive and aggressive advocacy efforts to help drive the national agenda toward ONS's concerns.

• Increasingly, much of what oncology nurses do and experience daily while caring for their patients is influenced directly by laws, regulations, and other policies.
• Policymakers and elected officials can positively and negatively influence issues that affect cancer treatment, research prevention, early detection, etc.
• Lawmakers regularly make decisions that have an impact on patients, physicians, nurses, healthcare insurers, hospital administrators, and researchers and these decisions may be made with limited substantive knowledge and understanding of the people and systems they are affecting.
• More and more oncology nurses are taking action and making a difference. Your voice matters, and we need your help.

Members of Congress are most responsive to people from their own states and communities, and they must hear from oncology nurses about their priorities and concerns. Without hearing directly from oncology nurses about priority problems and recommended solutions, policymakers either will fail to address such concerns or use information and expertise provided to them by others. Some of their sources may not share the views of the oncology nursing community. Policymakers must have your input to be aware of the needs in their communities and the ramifications of changes in policy. A well-informed, articulate, passionate oncology nurse can be a valued resource to elected officials and their staff, can raise issues of importance, and can help craft and implement necessary solutions.

Taking advocacy action on ONS health policy priorities is an integral part of the ONS mission and of being an advocate for patients and nursing. The first step in getting involved in ONS health policy advocacy efforts is to join ONStat — the ONS electronic grassroots network. It’s free and fun. You will be contacted only a handful of times a year to take action when your elected officials are in a position to influence a bill or policy of interest to ONS. With its Legislative Action Center, ONS makes taking action easy — it takes less than five minutes to weigh in, and it makes a world of difference. The involvement and support of ONS members in ONStat is critical to the support of the ONS mission and is much appreciated.

Join ONStat - http://www.ons.org/lac/onstat.shtml