Injury & Violence Prevention INdepth
Injury & Violence Prevention INdepth
Advocacy In Action - Advocacy Day 2025
In this episode, guest hosts Sharon Gilmartin, Safe States Executive Director, and Paul Bonta, Director of Government Relations, discuss Advocacy Day, which took place on March 20, 2025. Paul shares why it is so important for Safe States members and partners to participate in Advocacy Day, especially this year.
Christa Thelen, Safe States Program Manager, interviews participants at Advocacy Day in Washington DC on March 20th to have them share their experience about the day.
Brandon Neath, Safe States, Government Relations Manager, shares policy-related resources at the end of the episode for listeners to check out on the Safe States website (www.safestates.org). These include: the Injury and Violence Prevention Network and the Policy Fellows Program.
Hi, welcome to the IVP INdepth podcast, a Safe States Alliance production. I'm Sharon Gilmartin, Executive Director at Safe States Alliance, and joining me today are Paul Bonta, Director of Government Relations, and Brandon Neath, Manager of Government Relations. We are your guest hosts for this episode of IVP INdepth, and we're thrilled to be here to talk with you about our Advocacy Day that took place on March 20th in Washington, DC. Paul, would you like to tell our listeners a little bit more about Advocacy Day and why it's so important to participate in the legislative process, especially this year?
Paul Bonta:Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Sharon. And so we've held several annual advocacy days throughout the years, but this year, our goal was to really schedule or bring the most injury and violence prevention professionals from across the country to Washington DC to spend a day educating members of their congressional delegation about the impact that injury and violence prevention programs have back home in the communities where they live. And so the goal, as I said, is really, for the first time, I think, ever, to have a focused and concerted effort aimed at educating policy makers about the work that injury and violence prevention professionals do day to day. As some of you may remember, the House Appropriations Committee last year proposed to eliminate the CDC Injury Center. So we really felt that this year's annual Advocacy Day was really extremely important, and we felt that we really needed to engage as many injury and violence prevention professionals, as many injury and violence prevention stakeholder organizations, in our advocacy day process, given this interest, at least among House appropriators, in working to eliminate the work of the CDC Injury Center. So the day is really aimed at facilitating an opportunity for injury and violence prevention professionals to establish relationships with their elected officials in Washington, DC. We, from the very beginning, plan this day to ensure that our members have an opportunity to enjoy time spent with their colleagues on Capitol Hill, meeting with policy makers to talk about injury and violence prevention programs. So we really work to ensure that everybody who participates enjoys the experience. Because, as I said, the goal at the end of the day is to provide a forum for our members to establish relationships with their elected officials in Washington. And the best way to ensure that that happens is to make this an enjoyable experience for everybody, and obviously for those who are unable to travel to Washington, DC., we've also activated our legislative action center on our website to facilitate communication via email with congressional offices, so that we really, truly have a groundswell of our members engaging in the democratic process, engaging with their policy makers and educating them about the importance of injury and violence prevention programs.
Christa Thelen:I'm Christa Thelen, Program Manager at Safe States Alliance. I was able to participate in our Advocacy Day on March 20th in Washington, DC. Members and partners of Safe States at this year's Advocacy Day participated in close to 100 meetings that were scheduled with their representatives in the House and Senate to discuss the importance of injury and violence prevention, especially the CDC National Center for Injury Prevention. It was an awesome day for Safe States at the Capitol! Hear what our members and partners shared about their experience at Advocacy Day 2025...
Dilenny Roca:Hi. My name is Dilenny Roca. I am from New York City, the Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention. I'm excited to be here today. I was a Safe States Policy Fellow about three years ago, and since then, I have had the opportunity to come to Washington, DC for Hill Day and speak to my delegates today. In particular, I'm meeting with three of them, and I'm excited to talk to them about the ability of our center to to make New York City a safer and more healthy place for the children and families who live in their particular districts. I work in Washington Heights and Inwood, and I look forward to speaking to them about the work that we're doing on unintentional injuries, including home safety, fall prevention for our children, bike safety, and also how we use our data that we gather from the Injury Research Center and from the trauma registry, as well as the national data that we get from the CDC and the NCIPC to figure out what injuries we need to work on, and this is one of the most important reasons why we need their support for the CDC and the injury research and control centers, because the data that they provide us is so valuable, and when we put together that data from a national perspective and use it with the population based data that we gather from New York and New York City, we make so many changes to the way that people live and work and play, and we can make a big difference in the world of families every single day.
Christa Thelen:Thanks Dilenny.
Tony Gomez:I'm Tony Gomez. I'm Manager of Injury and Violence Prevention at Public Health Seattle and Dr King County up in the Northwest in Washington State, I've been coming to hill advocacy efforts for about 10 years, and I think it's one of the most important things we can do, is talking with our members of Congress about our injury and violence prevention work, and this includes strong support for the CDC Injury Center. They're kind of at the center of a lot of the work that needs to happen, and the interconnectedness of the federal efforts on all the agencies and organizations, nonprofits, including Safe States, to the states and to local government and to local nonprofits, is just so important. So the times we're in are not lost upon us of how you know, while we're advocating for injury and violence efforts, they're also connected with housing, with education, with other health issues. So the work we're doing is just hugely important. I so look forward to educating our members offices about the important work we do.
Christa Thelen:Great. Thanks Tony.
Ashley Chavez:Hi, I'm Ashley Chavez. I am from Wilmer, Minnesota. I am a Safe States Policy Fellow this year. This is my first time at Advocacy Day, and my first time in Washington, DC. I am an evaluator for the state of Minnesota at the Department of Health, and I'm really looking forward to emphasizing and lifting up the great work that Minnesota Department of Health has done, and especially around the funding areas that we have been supported by our federal partners. I am really looking forward to this day!
Dominque Rose:My name is Dominique Rose, and I'm a Senior Research Scientist at Nationwide Children's Hospital, and I'm from Ohio, and I'm here today, really excited for Advocacy Day, so I can talk to my representatives of the House and the Senate and all those things to kind of understand what's going on with the CDC funding and to advocate for better funding from our line of research.
Christen Rexing:Hi Christen Rexing, Executive Director of SAVIR. I'm in today from Philadelphia. It's really exciting. I come to the IVPN Hill Day every year. It's amazing. I bring students. Actually, Dominique is taking one student today to her visits. I love coming and supporting both the larger ask around injury and violence prevention, but specifically our asks around our ICRC and how critical that seed funding is for research in the field.
Unknown:Great. Thanks both for being here. Have a fun day today.
Christen Rexing:Thanks for having us!
Lauren Battle:Hi, I'm Lauren Battle. I'm a Government Relations Manager with Trust for America's Health. I'm very excited to be here advocating with Safe States and with all the other advocates. I'm looking forward to advocating for substance use prevention as well as suicide prevention. CDC, Injury Center has been so useful in terms of preventing suicide and overdose within a lot of states and communities across the country. So we're really looking forward, really looking forward to supporting that work and really promoting that work with legislators on the hill.
Catherine Murphy:Hi, my name is Catherine Murphy, and I'm an analyst at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. I'm really excited to be participating in the Safe States Hill Day today and advocating on behalf of the Injury Center, I think from most recent meetings up on the Hill, we've learned that it's incredibly important for advocates to come out from all of their states and share with their representatives and their staff on the ground stories of what cuts to these centers and programs mean for their communities, and I'm really thrilled to be part of that today.
Christa Thelen:Great. Thank you both!
Marissa Perico:Hi. My name is Marissa Perico. I'm a social worker and Master of Public Health Student. This is my first Advocacy Day, and I'm really excited to meet with by lawmakers and share more about the importance of public health. And I'm really looking forward to sharing my personal experiences and my work and being able to use that as a form of advocacy. Thank you.
Christa Thelen:Great. Thank you!
Lisa Roth:Lisa Roth, University of Iowa, Injury Prevention Research Center. I've participated in multiple Safe States Advocacy Days, and every single time I am absolutely excited to be on the Hill, using my voice and just feeling like this is a fantastic opportunity to educate our congressional members about the critically important work that we do in injury and violence prevention. We've had a great response so far today, and I'm just excited to be able to hear that there is support and continued support for the work that we do, and just the opportunity to really educate the members on how we're making impact in our local communities has been really an important point and also something that's definitely resonating with them.
Christa Thelen:Great. Thanks, Lisa! We want to thank everyone who participated in Advocacy Day, both in Washington, DC and virtually, in making it such a success this year. Safe States staff was pleased with the turnout and appreciated everyone taking part in supporting IVP. I'll now turn it over to my colleague, Brandon Neath, to wrap things up.
Brandon Neath:I'm Brandon Neath, manager of Government Relations at Safe States Alliance, and I'm going to close this out. I'd like to thank our sponsor, the Society for Professional Health Education, or SOPHE, for supporting this conversation and their commitment to injury and violence prevention overall. Two other policy related items I'd like to share with you are the Injury and Violence Prevention Network, IVPN and the Policy Fellows Program. The IVPN is a group of national organizations that support injury and violence prevention policies at the national level and advocates for federal funding for injury and violence prevention Safe States convenes and leads the network, including facilitating monthly calls for information sharing and coordinating and collaborating on joint strategies for advancing shared goals. The Policy Fellows Program is a one year virtual program designed to strengthen and expand injury and violence prevention policy leadership at the local, state and federal levels. The purpose of the Policy Fellows Program is to support the implementation of Safe States Alliance's strategic map by engaging members and supporting advocacy and policy making. Program participants receive training, technical assistance and peer based support aimed to increase skills and self confidence, to educate policy makers, once again at the local, state and national levels, in support of injury and violence prevention. To learn more about these programs, please visit our website at www.safestates.org. Lastly, if you'd like to keep up to date on the policy landscape and injury and violence prevention, please make sure to tune in to our news From the Hill blog, formerly News from Washington, as well as our Advocacy Action Alert Center. Thank you again for listening to IVP INdepth. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode, whether it's on Google podcasts, Apple podcasts or Spotify. We'll see you next time, and until then, stay safe and injury free.