WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDENT POLITICAL ADVOCACY NETWORK (SPAN)

Congratulations on becoming your chapter’s SPAN liaison! You have one of the most important jobs because advocating for our profession is vital to ensure it will flourish in the future! Law and policy are what shape the practice of pharmacy, and it is crucial for student pharmacists to advocate to ensure our patients can receive our services. To influence law and policy, it is important to advocate to our legislators and our patients, so each will recognize our value.

“What is advocacy” you might ask? It is the act of supporting something you believe in. You can do this by voting, conducting a letter-writing campaign, planning a health fair at your state capital, or meeting legislators face-to-face, all of which we will explore in this virtual binder.

Common SPAN Duties

To get you started with planning for the upcoming year, we wanted to provide you with a list of duties many SPAN liaisons perform throughout the year. Feel free to modify this list or to add to it with the individual duties your chapter has assigned to your position.

  1. Responsible for all legislative, policy, and activism activities
  2. Help coordinate your chapter members’ involvement and attendance at your region’s Mid-Year Regional Meeting (MRM).
  3. This includes organizing and hosting a chapter policy brainstorming session prior to your MRM to create your chapter’s resolution.
  4. Hold a Mock House of Delegates for your chapter members prior to MRM and the APhA Annual Meeting to choose your chapter’s resolution and familiarize your chapter with HOD procedures.
  5. Coordinate your Chapter members’ involvement and attendance at your state association’s annual policy meeting if you reside in a state that has one.
  6. Submit articles to your school or local newspaper when appropriate to promote pharmacy legislative awareness among your colleagues and within your community.
  7. Participate in American Pharmacists Month (APhM) and coordinate events to promote pharmacy during the month of October.
  8. Organize and hold a legislative day to increase student pharmacist political activism.
  9. Attend all of your chapter’s general and officer meetings.
  10. Hold information sessions or brown bag lunches to educate your chapter members on current legislation and to provide a forum for discussion about different aspects of the policy process.

As SPAN liaison, your primary responsibility is to educate your chapter on the legislative process and how to advocate effectively to legislators and patients. Keeping your chapter up-to-date on current issues can generate interest in advocacy and empower students to get involved. One place where members can have an impact on APhA-ASP is through the policy proposal process. It is part of your job as SPAN liaison to help and encourage your chapter to participate in the APhA-ASP policy proposal process.

Policy Process in Brief

One of the most important activities that the Academy of Student Pharmacists participates in is the APhA-ASP Policy Process. This process allows students to voice their opinions to influence the goals and objectives of the Academy. Every policy begins with an idea that is brought to a chapter from one of its members. After much discussion on the chapter, regional, and national levels, the most prominent ideas are brought to the APhA-ASP House of Delegates during the APhA Annual Meeting. Once passed by the House, those ideas become resolutions representing the collective voice of student pharmacists.

The complete book of adopted resolutions represents APhA-ASP’s official position on important issues facing pharmacy. These resolutions create a unified voice for student pharmacists, and they provide guidance when lobbying to local, state, and national representatives. You can find the current book of resolutions in this toolkit titled “APhA-ASP Adopted Resolutions: 1973-2011.”

A quick breakdown of the policy process can be found below, but a more detailed version can be found in this toolkit under “APhA-ASP Capsule: The Policy Process in Detail.”

  1. The APhA-ASP policy process
  2. At the Chapter Level
  3. Individual members come up with ideas and take them to the chapter
  4. Chapter discusses ideas and formulates them into resolutions
  5. Hold a mock House of Delegates at your chapter to choose the resolution that your chapter will submit to your regional delegate for MRM
  6. Do background research on your resolution, and look for similar resolutions in the book of adopted resolutions
  7. Submit your chapter’s resolution to your regional delegate at least 2 weeks before your region’s MRM
  8. Your regional delegate will let you know if your chapter needs to collaborate with another chapter to combine similar resolutions
  9. At the Regional Level
  10. At MRM—discuss resolutions from other chapters in your region at the MRM policy proposal forum
  11. Chapter delegates vote on resolutions at the closing business session
  12. At the National Level
  13. APhA-ASP resolutions committee meets in January to formulate resolutions from all of those passed at each MRM to be discussed at the APhA Annual Meeting
  14. At the APhA Annual Meeting, chapters discuss resolutions at the open hearing on proposed resolutions
  15. Reference committee takes notes and meets after the session to make recommendations to the HOD
  16. Chapter delegates vote on the recommendations at the HOD
  17. Policy standing committee takes action on the passed resolutions

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