My Advocacy Experience
By Gayle M Taylor-Ford, LSCSW, LCAC
I am sharing my story and experience
in the hope of more people
choosing to get involved and advocate
for what they believe in. Your
voices need to be heard. Every
voice is important. Everyone who
is involved and doing this now had
a first time.
I live in Kansas. I have a master’s
degree in Social Work, own my
company, I am board member/
secretary for the International Pain
Foundation, and I am on the Government
Relations Advisory Committee
(GRAC) for the National
MS Society. None of these things
are a requirement to be involved in
advocacy. In fact, I was asked to
join the GRAC for the National MS
Society as a result of my advocacy
work.
In January 2016, I received a call
from Barby Ingle, president of
iPain, asking if I would be available
to testify in opposition to a Step
Therapy Bill as written as it did not
contain patient protections. Since it
was my first time, Barby helped
write my testimony with the facts
then I was able to add a small personal
piece to it. As I learned what
Step Therapy was, I realized that I
was living it with my husband in
real time. My husband, Dan Ford
was diagnosed with MS in December
2015. So, I added a very brief
paragraph about what is happening
to my husband in written testimony.
When I showed up to testify, January
22, 2016, at the Senate Committee
of Health and Public Welfare
hearing on SB 341, I was nervous.
The room was packed full of
people and a lot of press. The instructions
given prior to testifying
was that there were a lot of people
present to testify, therefore they
were limiting the time of each person
and to please keep it with the 3
-minute time frame we were being
given. I was able to hear several
other people “read their written testimony”
prior to my turn. I decided
quickly that was boring, hearing
facts repeated over and over again,
yes, they are important, however
these Senators were basically hearing
a lot of the same information
over and over again. I knew I had
to take a different approach. Sud-
30—iPain Living Magazine