The Importance of Advocacy —Why You Need to Be Involved

In the summer of 1999, I was a first-year graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. I was eager to enter the field, and excited to take a course about professional issues in speech-language pathology. During the course, I listened to several guest speakers talk about their experiences in the field. They spurred my interest in learning more about my future profession. They also spurred concern when they mentioned a law had been passed placing a Medicare cap on outpatient rehabilitation therapy services, including speech-language pathology services. Many of the speakers talked about how this cap threatened jobs and services in their work settings. Fortunately, every year since 1999, Congress has passed an exceptions process that allows Medicare beneficiaries to receive medically necessary services beyond the cap. Now there is a bill before Congress to repeal the cap. This is the time to act to repeal this cap: If the field is going to thrive, we have to be active. Professional advocacy and outreach is even in the ASHA Scope of Practice. It can no longer be an activity we engage in when we have extra time. We don’t have extra time, by the way! We have to actively engage in the process of advocacy to ensure a healthy future for our profession. Our Voices Are Powerful Proposed Legislative Changes Would Limit Student Loan Options OTC Hearing Aid Legislation Becomes Law: What’s Next?  To help, I launched the SLP Advocacy project to give my students an opportunity (...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Advocacy Audiology Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: blogs