Innovative Health Advocacy: Strategies to Break Through the Post-Election Noise

Not too long ago (in April 2006), A George Washington University grad student, thru the school of political mgmt and the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet published his thesis on “Understanding the Political Influence of Blogs—A Study of the Growing Importance of the Blogoshpere in the US Congress.”

There is a Yiddish expression that says: For example, is not proof.  So clearly, my anecdote about Congressman Stark wasn’t enough to draw any conclusions—I went back to Neil’s work, the GW grad student who attempted to “make the case for bloggings direct effect on the modern legislative process,” by asking the question:  Just how much of an influence on politics and policy do blogs really have?

I want to share with you, some of his conclusions, apropos of this morning’s topic.  Among his findings:

• Confirming anecdotal evidence which has long held that blogs are well read in the halls of Congress, 90.7% of our respondents said that they themselves or other people in their congressional office read blogs.  The data clearly showed that blogs are read by a wide, diverse audience consisting of a full range of staffers in the vast majority of Capitol Hill offices.

• Neither a member’s age, chamber, or party affiliation appeared to have an influence on blog readership.

• Some counterintuitive facts concerning who on the Hill is reading blogs—Traditionally, we might expect that blog readership would be largest amongst generally younger, more tech savvy junior level staffers but Neil’s data suggest that senior staffers are far more likely to be the ones reading the blogs in congressional offices.

• Blogs clearly matter to those participating in the policy development process.

Fast forward to today.  Blogs are no longer a new phenomenon—in fact, at the start of 2008, Technorati, the blogging search engine, indexed 112 million blogs, with roughly 120,000 new ones created daily.

A recent oped in PR Week stressed that “While the influence of blogs might have been debatable six years ago, it is impossible to deny that blogs have become an entrenched part of the communications landscape.”  The author, a digital strategist at Burson-Marsteller, goes on to say that “In 2008, blogs are not a new frontier to be approached with trepidation. They are slowly, but steadfastly becoming as fundamental as corporate Websites….A blog strategy is now a critical part of call companies’ external communications.”

Now we are going to fast forward to Post-Election Washington DC.

What’s a health advocate to do—health care, as is typically the case, is in many ways caught in the push pull of the Internet—with the desire to control the message and the ever-present concern over privacy on the one hand, versus understanding the power of the Internet on the other, many health companies and organizations are conflicted about jumping in.

BIG mistake.  Let me repeat that—BIG mistake.  Just as this Presidential race  has proven, regardless of who wins the White House, the Internet has fundamentally changed elections—can you imagine a race without the talking heads blogging, campaign operatives bombarding us with Instant Messaging, or elected officials emailing us at all hours of the night and day?  Elections without the Internet—I don’t think so.

Likewise for advocacy campaigns—we are truly witnessing an evolution in cause campaigns—and health campaigns are no exception—we’ve gone from traditional lobbying and paper direct mail to grass roots and grass tops intercepts.  But something else is going on here.

We are moving from influentials to e-fluentials.

Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist was a keynote speaker at this years Public Relations Society of America International Conference and among other things, he discussed how PR professionals could benefit from the evolution in the public’s use of the Internet.

Here’s what he had to say:

…peer-to-peer communications methods—twittering, blogging and facebook—are much more important…the whole campaign is really from the bottom up, which is scary because we are living in a transitional time from top-down money politics to bottom up grassroots politics…it’s like word of mouth is now scaling up to the millions, maybe the hundreds of millions.

My advice to all of you:  get comfortable with these not-so-new tools; these things called blogs--they are here to stay.  If you are not ready to jump in with your own blog, you should at least be scanning other blogs on a regular basis—to see who is saying what and to correct any misinformation.

It can be a costly mistake to think that just because you don’t blog, that you are controlling your message.  Wrong.  You could be allowing others to define you, your organization and your message.

Don’t be afraid to avail yourself of this tool.  2009 promises to be an incredible challenge and opportunity for health care.  With the economy seizing and companies panicking the next President is certainly going to have his hands full—and health care is nothing, if not an economic issue. 

And, all of us in this room are going to be racing around like idiots for those limited health care dollars which sadly, will define winners and losers—blogging alone probably won’t make you a winner but it is an important component, not to be overlooked.

Blogs are, after all, conversations— and one of the greatest assets you can include in your campaign tool kit is the voice of health care workers, patients, and caregivers.  In addition to flying them in to testify, one at a time, or publishing op eds, one at a time, or making those Hill visits, one at a time, take advantage of blogs and amplify their voices across the political divide.

You can be very creative—a blog is an opportunity to showcase your data, your arguments, your positions, and just as important, to point out the shortcomings of your “competition.”

Amplify has created a new blog, called Disruptive Women in Health Care (www.disruptivewomen.net).  We recognized that while valuable, peer reviewed articles that could take 18 months to see the light of day were no longer sufficient in this digital, warp speed world in which we work.

We also got tired of limited opportunities for opeds, letters to the editor, and so forth.  We thought, why not create a platform ourselves—so we did.  We encourage guest posts and comments.  Please visit Disruptive Women and tell all your colleagues to take a look and blog with us.

The power of the pen is indeed mighty.  Think of blogs as your pen on steroids—you’ll need them in 2009.