The American Nurses Association has launched a new initiative designed to help state-level experts in the profession to play a bigger role in Federal-level lobbying.

The Nurses Action Society, announced November 13, is “designed to empower the association’s members to engage with federal officials and advance the public policy priorities of the nursing profession,” according to a press release. Participants in the program, called NAS Ambassadors, are invited to participate in ANA lobbying activities with members of the U.S. Congress.

According to Ahnyel Burkes, DNP, RN-BC, NEA-BC, Executive Director of the Louisiana State Nurses Association and an incoming ANA board member, the effort is designed to encourage stronger advocacy participation among practicing nurses, filling a middle-ground between grassroots advocacy efforts (like calls and letters) and direct in-person advocacy from professional lobbyists. 

“For a while we’ve been asking our government affairs department for a way for our nurses who already do work at the state level to work at the congressional level,” she said. “We had already done a lot of work with them at the grassroots level, but we hadn’t really looked at how we can leverage the existing relationships.”

A key challenge within the profession is overworked staff, so ANA took care to make engagement as flexible as possible.

Tim Nanof, ANA VP for Policy and Government Affairs, said that the program has been in development for about a year, with a focus on “low-hanging fruit”—nursing professionals who have already demonstrated engagement with legislators, but perhaps not specifically around ANA policy goals. “We have chief nursing officers within our membership, and often the largest employer in a congressional district is the hospital,” he said. “So the idea is to find the people who might already have a relationship with Congress and bring them into the fold and use it for ANA’s benefit, nursing’s benefit, not just that particular hospital or entity.”

Because a key challenge within the profession is a labor shortage and overworked staff, ANA took care to make engagement with NAS as flexible as possible. Its information sessions have been recorded webinars, allowing participants to take part on their own schedule. “The one thing that we nurses are sometimes short on is time,” Burkes said. “So having things like the recorded webinar, I’ve gotten so many messages from nurses saying, ‘Thank you so much for doing that. I wasn’t able to be there live, but I had it on while I was coming home from work. A lot of it is making it easy for members to participate, and having a clear, defined ask.”

Early interest in NAS is strong: According to Nanof, an introductory webinar attracted approximately 800 sign-ups and about 300 live participants. That makes for a sizable pool of supporters who can be contacted to speak around ANA advocacy issues, and who already have some experience with it. “ We have people who are already going out and talking to members of Congress, but they’re not talking to them about what ANA specifically cares about,” he said. “So we’re trying to bring those things together.”

Burkes said that effort can strengthen ANA overall. “A lot of times nurses want to get involved in policy, but don’t really know how, so this also gives another membership benefit, another way for nurses to really engage and learn the skills needed to be effective,” she said. “It’s another tool that we’re giving our members to be effective in our profession and in our association.”

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