Interest in policy influences on health care is high, and will remain high as long as health care costs continue to rise and health care reform remains a hot topic in the news. There are inevitable and frequent points of interface between health care public policy and the health professions; in their daily work, clinicians see the problems with the health care system but often feel powerless and unsure how to advocate for system changes. Clinicians and Health Care Advocacy is written by clinicians for clinicians and focuses on how policy works and what individual professionals can do to affect policy. It looks at the facts and processes in an accessible way that employs case-based examples of clinician adavocacy to illustrate its points. The book is nonpartisan and will stay neutral on preferences for one public policy solution versus another (single payer vs. market reform, for example). Instead, it encourages a model of clinicians as responsible for healing not only the individual patient but also the larger health care system in which they work.

Clinicians and health care advocacy: The reasons why.- How does federal health policy work?.- Tools and resources to build advocacy skills.- Opportunities for advocacy in the legislative branch.- The rules of the game.- Advocacy in the executive branch of government.- Establishing a health policy strategy at the association level.- Building partnerships and coalition advocacy.- State-level advocacy.- Local advocacy for the health care professional.- Clinicians and health care advocacy: what comes next.