Advance Practice Nurse Advocacy Essay Discussion Paper
Identify a health issue in Riverside County or California. Discuss a system-level advocacy strategy, students should identify specific groups or individuals that they would target as well as how they would target these individuals.
Advance Practice Nurse Advocacy
Identify a health issue in Riverside County or California.
A significant health issue in California is the mental health and substance use crisis. Statistics reveal that between January 2020 and January 2021, approximately 9,886 people in California overdosed and died. This marks a 50% increase in the statistics reported for the previous year. These overdose figures are alarming and indicate a need for intervention at the legislative level with stricter regulations and policies to control access to drugs, as well as access to more government funds and better treatment opportunities to ensure easier access to treatment for persons at risk of an overdose (Stoner-Mertz and Clark-Harvey, 2021). Advance Practice Nurse Advocacy Essay Discussion Paper
Discuss a system-level advocacy strategy, students should identify specific groups or individuals that they would target as well as how they would target these individuals.
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The system-level advocacy strategy would bring together anti-drug community groups in California with the intention of offering them a platform and opportunity to work together in changing the legislation and policies implemented in California. The groups that work together would target California legislators for lobbying them to make changes to the legislation and present new legislation that support their agenda. The specific advocacy strategy involves holding rallies to pressure the legislators while negotiating with them over the required legislative changes (Milstead & Short, 2019). There is a general awareness that these anti-drug groups have been working towards the identified goals, but have experienced issues and barriers that hinder their efforts. Through working together, they would coalesce their efforts to present a stronger voice with better odds of achieving change and improvements that make the legislations and policies implemented in California work better for anyone who uses them. Besides that, working together on the same issue allows for a stronger voice to be presented, which is more likely to be heard by the legislators and lead to reforms that benefit the rest of Californians in reducing overdose fatalities (Helming, Shields & Avino, 2020).
References
Helming, M., Shields, D., & Avino, K. (2020). Dossey & Keegan’s Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice (8th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Milstead, J. & Short, N. (2019). Health Policy and Politics: A Nurse’s Guide (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Stoner-Mertz, C., & Clark-Harvey, L. O. (2021, September 22). Opinion: Congress Must Act to Address California’s Mental Health and Substance Use Crises. https://www.calhealthreport.org/2021/09/22/opinion-congress-must-act-to-address-californias-mental-health-and-substance-use-crises/
