Announcing NHNA's Legislative Advocacy Council

The New Hampshire Nurses Association’s (NHNA) Commission on Government Affairs (CGA) is pleased to announce the creation of the Legislative Advocacy Council.  The purpose of this Council will be to assist the CGA with advocating for legislative issues prioritized by NHNA during the 2019 New Hampshire legislative session.  The Council will be comprised of four teams which will function independently and report to the CGA.  A member of the CGA will be assigned to each of the teams, to serve a resource. 

Members of each Legislative Advocacy Council teams will be tasked with reviewing the Legislative Service Requests (LSR) in early December and asked to prioritize the top 4 or 5 that should be presented to the membership through the Legislative Town Hall Forum on January 29, 2019.  A second function of the Council members will be to prepare a write up on each bill that evolves from the LSR and suggest a position for CGA to take on the bill.  Members of the team will present the bills during the Legislative Town Hall Forum.  During the legislative session (January to April/May) members of the Council teams will be encouraged to speak to state legislators regarding the bills identified and provide prepared testimony at legislative hearings with CGA support.  The CGA will provide resources and training to support this process at a dinner to be hosted by NHNA on Tuesday, December 4, 2018 (4:00 to 7:00 pm).  Advocacy tools will be available on the NHNA website.  CGA is aware of the work-life commitments of our members and will facilitate this work respectfully of these schedules.

We are seeking volunteers to serve on each of the four Council teams.  The four teams will be:

• Nursing Practice and Licensure Issues
• Maternal & Child Health Issues (including school nurse issues)
• Public Health Issues
• Behavior & Mental Health Issues

If you have clinical expertise in any of these areas and would like to serve on one of these teams please submit an intent-to-serve form on the NHNA website (please note you must be an NHNA member to serve on the Council.  Please note which team you are interested in serving on in the first box on the form.  Please let us know by October 31, 2018 if you are interested.

If you want to serve on the Legislative Advocacy Council:  Click Here

The American Nurses Association has declared this year as the Year of Advocacy.  This is your chance to make your voice as a nurse heard.  And when nurses speak, legislators listen.