Student Assembly Hill Day, 2023

Students meet with members of the House and Senate for advocacy training.

In March, 2023, leaders at the Social Mission Alliance (SMA) worked with students across health professions to advocate effectively to five offices of members of the House and Senate online, presenting fact sheets on the health professional density of their respective districts as well as speaking on relevant upcoming legislation and potential amendments. 

Activities leading up to this day included advocacy training for students which briefed them on current SMA advocacy efforts, as well as small group coaching sessions led by our Advocacy Advisory Council member, Manisha Sharma. 

On the day itself, students spoke with Members of Congress and their staff to impress the need for a diverse healthcare workforce and how to support efforts to build a more sustainable health workforce training pipeline to produce enough professionals to provide care for underserved areas and communities. 

There is an interest in Congress for ensuring that there are significant enough incentives to retain medical talent in underserved areas. With all the large firm medical interest lobbying happening in D.C., it is necessary to advocate for beneficial, ethical, and non-compulsory interventions into the health workforce.

Engaging in these activities helped to sharpen future health professionals’ policy and advocacy skills, galvanized the need for diligent and ethical interventions to support health professions, facilitated partnerships in Congress, and furthered the idea of Social Mission for health professionals in policymaking. We have been following up with the offices that we spoke to in March, and we hope to continue this work in the future through in-person hill day advocacy in the future, but are asking for your help. Please consider making a donation to the Social Mission Alliance to help fund travel for our students and Health Justice Fellows for hill days in the future.

For more information on how to get involved to further your own health professional training and better include social mission in it, learn more about our Student Assembly. 

For more information on SMA’s Advocacy Advisory Council and advocacy priorities, check out our State of Social Mission Policy and Advocacy webinar as well as our growing list of video resources on our Youtube. If you would like to get more involved, fill out the State of Social Mission Advocacy Exit form after viewing to find out more about our Advocacy Coalition Steering Committee.