FINDING COMMON GROUND
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can we leave a mark on our community? The emotion was a mixture of connectedness with purpose and frantically grasping for an answer. I felt the tendency to want to come up with a“ big” idea, or an idea that could have“ high-touch” and“ widespread” impact. While this might seem like a reasonable approach, it actually undermined the process of what it meant to advocate and taught me a vital lesson. Advocacy does not start with the final product, but rather with engaging with a community, one person at a time. Advocacy begins with intimacy, care and love. Instead of thinking about articulate clauses and hot-topic discussions, I thought about my ever-growing and ever-evolving brothers. I thought about the kind Kroger worker and the friendly security man in the green Louisville MedEd district t-shirt. I thought about the patients whose absent appointments made my heart swell, and the long-suffering“ frequent flyers” in the emergency department. Once I started to associate advocacy with the people I cared about, the“ high-touch” and“ widespread” concepts represented individual people who could be helped better with the changes needed. Much to my surprise, the ideas then started to flow.
Stop, Collaborate and Listen!
The process of developing and writing resolutions was a wonderful tango of thinking, listening, collaborating and repeating the process at different times and with different people. After our brainstorming session, we all selected topics we were to do more research on and for which we would draft resolutions. A key aspect of advocacy that I learned in this process is appreciating those you are advocating with, to the same extent you appreciate whom you are advocating for. The best way to care for those who need your voice to uplift them is to remove ego from advocacy. When you see your collaborators and those who are helping you toward a goal as team members and not competitors, it expands your range of impact. By the end of the summer, under the leadership of Dr. Bhatia and Dr. Gupta, Vishaka Motheramgari, Caroline Ploeger, Nikita Nair, Addie Wanner and I were able to contribute ideas, and write our resolutions. We presented them – about reducing teenage pregnancy through sex education, combating myths regarding“ healthy” vapes and introducing online childhood safety in schools – to GLMS at large at the Policy & Advocacy meetings. This could not have been done without valuing what each person had to offer and working as a collective.
Challenge Yourself to Speak Up
As medical students, we are known to embrace challenges. Whether it be memorizing the different reabsorption and secretion methods of the nephron or balancing the demands of extracurriculars in a post-pass / fail Step 1 era, we are ready to meet challenges head-on. However, there is one challenge that surpasses them all: speaking confidently in front of physicians. As a medical student, the fear of not meeting their expectations is intimidating enough to inspire retreat. When Dr. Bhatia and Dr. Gupta encouraged Vishaka, Caroline and me to speak up and explain why the GLMS Delegation should support the resolutions we proposed, I felt how rapidly the fight-or-flight response kicks in! But in those instances, the challenge before us paled before the potential benefit of impacting lives. Advocacy requires you to expand what you believe you are capable of and watch yourself grow into whom you were meant to be.
The Privilege of Waiting for Change
After the resolutions were presented at the advocacy meetings, they were passed along for review by the KMA Reference Committee and eventually debated at the KMA House of Delegates. It was inspiring to see physicians engage in respectful yet intentional discourse about a variety of topics, all of which centered around improving health care outcomes in the state of Kentucky. I could entertain a list of deep insights and nuggets of advice I learned throughout these two days, but I will share the one that impacted me the most. I have always thought that change is slow, that it takes time. My natural disposition favors slow, deep thinking, and so I am more inclined to favor a long-term strategic approach to advocacy – a little here, a little there, and 10 years later, we are where we are meant to be. However, through this advocacy season, I came to appreciate how privileged I was to have the patience for change to be slow. A“ slow burn” approach simply means the issue is not burning me.“ Slow burn” change is a wonderful theoretical framework, especially when removed from the issue, but it does not confront the reality of having to inform those who depend on you that they must continue to“ endure.” As an advocate, it challenged me to not only see time as a luxury for developing strategy but also a metric of endurance.
We’ re All In This Together
One of the most refreshing aspects of the most recent resolution cycle was observing the consistent focus on patient well-being among the advocating physicians. When I used to think of advocacy, I thought of heated discourse between polarized and unforgiving sides who wanted nothing to do with the“ opposing” side’ s views or stances. But from the GLMS Policy & Advocacy meetings to the final KMA Annual Meeting, the consistent focus was on how to improve patient outcomes. At no point was an opposing opinion an enemy opinion. In fact, both internal and external discourse were encouraged and embraced. This reality does not remove passion or even anger at opposing opinions, but it certainly does not demonize them. The ultimate goal was always to improve the life of patients: a goal that should never be out of sight.
Temiloluwa Haastrup is a second-year medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
10 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE