Public Policy Workshop 2017

Whenever I’m in an airport I tend to let my mind wander.  Where is that person going?  What are they going to be doing there?  What did they have for breakfast?  While I was waiting for my flight to Washington DC, I knew exactly where the people in the waiting area were going- and what they were doing.  They, like me, were on their way to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Public Policy Workshop.  To put it into the Academy’s words, PPW is an ‘annual food and nutrition advocacy summit, where you get up to date on current issues, and learn how to become the voice of nutrition that Congress trusts.’  We spent two days in our nation’s capital learning how to advocate for our profession.  This is my story of being there for the first time.

If anyone had told me a year ago I would be sitting in Senator Bernie Sanders’ office discussing preventative nutrition policy and nutrition education in the Farm Bill with his staffers, I would have said that you were crazy.  I got into policy about six months ago when I first got into the nutrition field.  I was a brand new dietitian and found myself the Director of Nutrition for a group wellness program.  The biggest deterrent for our program is cost.  In Massachusetts and New Hampshire the program is covered in full by insurance providers, in Vermont… it’s not.  After our argument fell on deaf ears with private insurance companies, I remembered Martha Rardin, a dietitian from my internship, speaking to us about making real changes in our profession and legislation through advocacy.  After volunteering for the State Policy Representative position with the Vermont affiliate of the AND, I found myself in an advocacy role.  That role with VAND is how I found myself at the Public Policy Workshop.  The people that I see for nutrition services were why.

During the 48 hours that I spent in Washington DC, I was not alone.  Sure, I was with over 300 dietitians and nutrition professionals, and the AND armed me with everything I needed.  We spent five weeks prior to the workshop on webinars learning about how to advocate, and the issues that we’d be focusing on.  We learned about the Farm Bill and how SNAP-Ed and EFNEP affected our lives, and we learned about how the preventative care industry could be improved to enhance our practices.  Those issues were at the focal point of the Academy, but they are also important to me.  Like I said, while in DC, I was not alone.  In my thoughts, I was also with Michael, a gentleman who lost 50 pounds with the help of our preventative care practice and dropped both his total cholesterol and fasting blood glucose out of the risk ranges for chronic illness.  Kathy, a new grandmother who, after taking our 13 week class, now had the energy to play with her grandbaby was also with me.  And, I was with Kara, a single mom who put herself first by asking for our help and now exercises on a regular basis and now feeds her family fresh fruits and vegetables.  These stories, along with the other Vermonters who have walked through our doors were the reason why I decided to speak up for my profession.  After all, if dietitians don’t do it - no one will. 

                I got to Washington DC on Sunday morning and the workshop didn’t start until the afternoon.  I went to the hotel, and my room wasn’t ready.  No problem.  The Smithsonian American Art Museum was only a few blocks away and had a courtyard where I could grab some lunch and read my book while I waited.  When I walked into the museum I realized that admission was free, so I thought to myself ‘well, I don’t have pay, I might as well look around.’  I wandered through and found myself looking at an exhibit about some of the big change makers in the United States during the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and I kept hearing, as an echo in my head, words from the book I was reading on the plane ‘When the civil rights leaders began to force a reckoning with otherness in the 1960s, they did so in the name of love.’¹  Those that enacted, arguably, the greatest changes in our country didn’t do it from a place of data, numbers, violence, or outrage.  They did it from a place of love.  In his book, Across That Bridge, John Lewis claims that ‘the Civil Rights Movement, above all, was a work of love.  Yet even 50 years later, it is rare to find anyone who would use the word love to describe what we did.’²  Now, I’m not equating the advocacy of 300+ dietitians over one weekend to the enormity of the Civil Rights Movement - not in the slightest.  But, I felt so incredibly energized knowing that the small steps that I was taking, and the motivation behind them, were pushing me in the right direction.

                With that energy, the guidance from the AND, and the view of the sun setting over the national monuments, I was ready to charge the hill on Monday!  Vermont is lucky for a couple of reasons.

1) We’re a tiny state.  We have two Senators and one Representative, so we only had three meetings to attend.  While some would look at this as a negative - we only got to speak to three members of congress - we chose to look at it as a positive.  For some of our Vermont team this was their third of forth time attending so they have gotten to know the staff that we were meeting with.  Because of this, they have been able to form relationships over the past few years.  And, while we only got to speak to three members of congress, they have large voices in the House and the Senate.  So, for us, what we were asking from our representatives reached further than that which was provided by AND.  We also got to urge them to speak up to their fellow congress members about our issues.

And, 2) we ended up ‘preaching to the choir’ to some extent.  In Senator Leahy’s office after we landed our ask - ‘we want to urge Senator Leahy to continue to fund the Prevention and Public Health Fund’ - his staff member looked us in the eyes and said ‘he is’.  But, it was nice knowing that we wouldn’t run up against a wall while we were talking, and again we got to urge them to speak to other members of congress about our issues.

I know this seems like I’m into politics and policy a lot, but I’m not. Other than overhearing my roommates talk about current events in the news and reading my Facebook from time to time, I’m not super invested in politics. But I do feel a responsibility to advocate for my profession because it is my livelihood and because I care about the people that I work with.  And, I didn’t start off by committing to go to Washington DC for a weekend.  I started small, just a few action alerts when the emails came.  But I started paying more attention until found myself in front of the staff of Patrick Leahy talking about nutrition in legislation and why it matters.