Successful advocacy can open new doors for pharmacists to use their extensive clinical knowledge to care for their patients.  It’s an ASHP priority for one reason – Because your patients need you!

ASHP’s top advocacy priorities are:

• Payment - Paying pharmacists for patient care services
• Quality & Safety - Preventing harm, applying evidence, improving outcomes
• Residencies - Expanding funding for pharmacy residency training
• Technicians - Achieving standardized education, training, certification, and registration
• Workforce - Solving the challenges of staffing, credentialing, and leadership

ASHP’s advocacy efforts are focused on more than lobbying on Capitol Hill.  We are working to strengthen our relationships with all decision makers who can affect pharmacists and their patients.  This includes health policy makers in federal agencies, such as the Food & Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and quality organizations, like the Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum.

ASHP's Enhanced Advocacy Initiative

Advocacy is not simply important – it’s essential.  Even for those who think things are just fine the way they are.  That’s because advocacy doesn’t just have the power to make things better, it can also protect things from changing for the worse.

That is why ASHP has renewed its commitment to successful advocacy by devoting additional resources to building a stronger advocacy team.  In April 2007, the Board of Directors made a significant commitment to a bolder, more effective advocacy program.  As part of that commitment, ASHP is working to beefing up everything it does for advocacy.  This includes:

• Closing the research gap.  Partnering with the ASHP Research and Education Foundation, ASHP is sponsoring new research that clearly demonstrates the pharmacist’s value to the safest and most cost-effective care.
• Building a better toolbox.  ASHP’s new health policy analyst will help ASHP stay right on top of the issues that matter most to ASHP members.
• Specialists in position.  ASHP will be contracting with a specialist in reimbursement issues to help continue our march towards the ultimate goal:  payment for pharmacists’ services.