From Classroom to Capitol: Why Advocacy Education Matters

Ever wonder why some hearing healthcare professionals seem so passionate about advocacy while others shy away? Our conversation dives into the heart of building an advocacy culture that transforms not just legislation, but patient care itself.

We explore the critical importance of starting advocacy education during AuD and SLP programs. As our guest, Dr. Megan Adams insightfully notes, "Informed students become informed professionals" who can make better clinical decisions and effectively advocate for patients throughout their careers. The good news? Universities don't need complete curriculum overhauls, even a few targeted class sessions can equip future professionals with the advocacy tools they'll need.

Many clinicians and private practice owners hesitate to engage in advocacy because they don't see themselves as "political" or "persuasive" enough. We dispel this myth by revealing that most advocacy involves simply educating lawmakers about what audiologists do and why quality hearing care matters. Your expertise is your most powerful advocacy tool—no special personality required.

The consequences of disengagement can be severe. We discuss alarming attempts in several states to replace professional licensure with simple registration systems, which threatens accountability and patient safety. Our guest shares a compelling case from Indiana where hearing aid sales were nearly completely deregulated until professionals rallied to educate legislators about the potential harm to patients.

Perhaps most inspiring is the call to shift from defensive to offensive advocacy. Rather than constantly reacting to problematic legislation, proactive education of policymakers creates an environment where harmful bills are less likely to advance in the first place. When legislators understand hearing healthcare, they make better decisions.

Whether you're a seasoned advocate or have never contacted a legislator, this conversation offers practical wisdom for making a difference. Listen now to discover how your voice—regardless of how loud you choose to be—can help shape the future of hearing healthcare.

Connect with the Hearing Matters Podcast Team

Email: hearingmatterspodcast@gmail.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Advocacy in Healthcare
• 0:52 Starting Advocacy in Educational Programs
• 2:05 Private Practice Owners as Advocates
• 5:15 Misconceptions About Advocacy Efforts
• 6:30 Licensure vs. Registration Importance
• 8:55 Playing Offense Instead of Defense

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Friday Audiogram let's go. So you talk about building a culture of advocacy and there's so many of our colleagues we see in the hearing healthcare Facebook groups that are, you know, going to the hill and they're making change and they're being loud. It's the only time which is important to be loud Turn down that volume so you don't get hearing loss. That's a dad joke right there. But building a culture of advocacy when you talk about the importance of starting advocacy education in the AUD and SLP programs, you know professors only have in, you know, for SLP it's two years, for your master's and then AUD it's four years. Time is of the essence. How can we do this? Why is it so important to start at the collegiate level?

Speaker 2: 0:52

So informed students are going to create informed professionals. And starting at the level where you're taking in most of your knowledge, when you're entering the industry as a professional, is the best place to add this. And truly I would urge universities if this is not in your curriculum at all, it should be, and it doesn't mean it has to be an entire course. It doesn't mean it has to be an entire section of your course. You could spend just a couple of classes talking about this, discussing this, the what behind it, what is advocacy, what is lobbying? What are the big ways to do it? What are the smaller, easier ways to do it? What can it look like? And then the how do I do this? How do I make this happen? How do you speak to a policy maker? How do you do these things? And then they will know, entering whatever field of audiology they decide to go into, how to do that more effectively.

Speaker 1: 1:53

I love that informed students become informed professionals and those informed professionals can help their patients make educated hearing health care decisions. See, we have the connection here, megan. So we have hearing care professionals tune into our show weekly and many of them are private practice owners. How can private practice owners and clinicians, you know, see themselves as part of the advocacy solution, even if they don't? Now, here's the thing Even if they don't see themselves as persuasive or political you and I were kind of talking about this a couple of weeks ago, because that's often like we talk about. Sometimes the mountain is us Great book, by the way. We see ourselves as not being like persuasive or political. It's not me. Well, how can we get over that barrier, that that self-talk of like oh, I can't make a difference?

Speaker 2: 3:06

in the last election. But we do care if the audiology legislation in your state affects your business and affects the care that your patients deserve, and I think we can all agree on that. So that's really where we're all on the same team here. You do not have to have a persuasive personality. Most of the time when I've been involved directly with a legislator, most of the time when I've been involved directly with a legislator, I spend very little time actually talking about policy. It's typically talking about audiology. What do you do in a day? What is an audiologist? What does good hearing care look like? Why is it important that they know what good hearing care looks like?

Speaker 2: 3:45

It's oftentimes you don't have to try and persuade on a decision for a bill. In fact, I would probably say the majority of the time you don't have to do that. But it comes down to the misconceptions that people have about advocacy and lobbying, and one of my favorite things I did on this data was I had an open-ended portion where people could put comments in and, as I'm sure you can imagine, they were all over the place and some of the comments were you know, well, I'm retiring, so why should I get involved? And others were. Well. When there's large organizations like X National Audiology Organization, then you know we're hopeless. I mean, these are real things that people were saying and I realized, oh my goodness, people are just misinformed. And it's the same misinformation that we get frustrated about as professionals, that we see on Facebook and in the media that we think, oh my goodness, I hate that patients are seeing that. I feel the same way about the information that hearing care professionals are getting and believing and informing opinions on Well, especially the up-and-coming hearing care professionals.

Speaker 1: 5:04

When we talk about legacy and your advocacy efforts, advocacy isn't okay. I'm going to take three days and I'm going to go to Washington DC. That's not only what advocacy is. Advocacy can also be I'm going to make a 30 second selfie video and I'm going to talk to my patients about the importance of hearing healthcare and then maybe you tag one of your elected officials.

Speaker 1: 5:32

But I will say that the importance of advocacy, education and news as it relates to even Hearing Matters podcast one of the reasons, personally, I'm so excited for the podcast. We've been doing this for six years now. We want to educate hearing care professionals and consumers and there's been some states there was no malicious intent to do this, but it's just policymakers weren't educated on hearing health care. This is where I'm getting at replacing a licensure with registration. There's been a couple states where that's been in the bill replacing hearing aid licensure with registration. Can you, for our listeners and consumers, tuned in, can you share with us why that is important to find in a bill and actually have reversed so it doesn't even ever get passed, why licensure is so important?

Speaker 2: 6:30

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 6:32

The big keyword that it comes down to is accountability.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Okay, and unfortunately I know we've all heard those horror stories of the practice in our state hopefully not in all of our communities that has done XYZ or, you know, is doing things fraudulently or performing services that they are not licensed to perform, or you know, fill in the blank, but unfortunately it's those kind of bad apples, as we've talked about, that kind of sour it for everyone else, and so this accountability at the state level is incredibly important. I would urge every professional if you've never looked at your scope of practice for your state, go look at it, see if it's vague, see if it's detailed, see if it is accurate and if it's not. Try to have that conversation if you're comfortable. And one of the issues that came up a few years ago in Indiana was to deregulate the sale of hearing aids and that would have significantly impacted everyone's practice, our credibility as professionals, but then, most importantly, our patients' care. We know, because of best practice guidelines and data and research that supports evidence-based practice, that would be far from what's best for our patient.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Well, and the challenge there again, the deregulation can often come at a cost. Again, the deregulation can often come at a cost, especially as it relates to health care. And again, oftentimes, the authors of the bill. There's no malicious intent. Oftentimes it will be this umbrella of OK, let's replace licensure with registration for barbers, and let's also include hearing aid dispensers in there too, which is like that's totally different scope. This is the importance of lobbying, of reading those bills, of contacting the authors of those bills. But, megan, about 18 to 24 months ago and this, I still say this to this day and I always quote you you had said I still say this to this day and I always quote you you had said Blaze, I'm tired of playing defense, I want to play offense. Tell me more about what you mean there and why that's so important today in hearing health care.

Speaker 2: 8:55

Historically, we have always waited for an issue to come up and then we try and attack the issue, and that's exactly what happened with this deregulation of hearing aid sales in Indiana. House Bill is. It slipped under the radar time and time again and we got to the very end and everyone went, oh shoot, we need to address this. And so everyone rushed down to the statehouse and explained why this really wasn't in patients' best interest, and then it was unanimous at that point, and I'm grateful for the professionals that went down and did that. But is there a way to prevent it from even getting to that point? And what it comes down to is using your hearing aids versus barber example. So, using your hearing aids versus barber example. If our policymakers knew what hearing care is, what an audiologist or hearing care professional does, then that entire situation probably could have been avoided, because many of them would have said my XYZ wears hearing aids and their audiologist is fantastic, and I know they're not the same thing as a barber. Nothing against barbers, we just do different things. No-transcript.