That’s honestly something I've been struggling with. People need to know how to advocate for something. Sometimes I can kind of know what's going on through different activist organizations. With the New Hampshire Young Democrats, I would publish a weekly newsletter where we would take legislation, break it down, and talk about why it’s bad or why it’s really good. It provided a platform where we could personalize emails and give people the option to take different types of action directly from there.
It is hard to find and track legislation, especially at the state level, and know what's going on, even if you hear about legislation- to really know the politics behind it and what is actually going on. I think people pay a lot of attention to what's going on at the national level, but it is also much more difficult at the national level to really affect change. I think that is part of why this first training is on how to find and track important health care legislation. It will help shed some light on that and provide them with the raw tools to get there. It might not be the easiest tool, like navigating the Maine State website, but it may a good place to start to figure out what's going on.
Definitely getting to Augusta, and being able to testify. The house session starts in January, so to be able to engage with the Maine legislation for the first time in the spring. I'm also starting research with the AMA Club to look at COVID-19 vaccine confidence. We just finished on medical students, and presented at UNE COM’s Student Research & Scholarship Forum, and now we're expanding that to healthcare workers in Maine. <>
Amelia Keane, COM '24 on election day in 2016