Follow the Money: Your Member Advocacy Contributions
by Loren Talbot
“Where does my advocacy contribution go?” is a question our member coordinator, Janine Cuthbertson, gets on occasion. It’s been a moment since we had the opportunity to talk about it, so we wanted to share where this money goes.
As a small team, INELDA partners with other organizations whose work is rooted in the same advocacy interest areas. Your dollars allow us to join these organizations, creating other opportunities to amplify our voice, support policy work in the deathcare space, and partner with other organizations doing parallel work.
To get a sense of who some of these partners are, you can learn more about them on our partnerships and affiliations page. Some of these organizations are doing work at the state level, others at the national level. Each is advocating for end-of-life doulas’ integration into the continuum of care or more equity and choice for individuals at end of life. In some cases we contribute directly to the organizations lending our collective voices in the policy space, attending conferences, or tabling at events.
One of the newest membership organizations we have joined is the Street Medicine Institute, whose mission is to inspire and equip communities worldwide to provide street medicine services to persons experiencing rough-sleeping homelessness. INELDA can imagine end-of-life doulas integrated into street medicine teams everywhere. Partnering with important organizations like the Street Medicine Institute allows us to have those conversations on the ground level. We recently returned from a trip in Kansas City, Missouri, where its latest conference was held. There we met with street medicine providers, harm reduction groups, and other visionaries working in the unhoused space.
Later this month we will be in Washington, D.C. for the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (also known as C-TAC) conference. As a member of C-TAC, we lend our voice to advocate for the importance of advance care planning, doula integration in the health care system, and increased access to social workers through Medicare billing, and we learn what other partner organizations are researching in the serious illness space. This organization and annual conference has been instrumental to our growth as an organization, both by showcasing dynamic and cutting-edge speakers and by the support it has offered INELDA through quarterly check-ins on our own policy and partner interests.
While these are just two of the organizations your advocacy dollars are going to, we are excited to continue to share the ongoing work in some of the other spaces. As we continue to grow our policy arm, we are always open and excited to hear from you regarding what your vision is for our field. Feel free to drop us a line anytime and share what areas you think INELDA should be tuned into.
AUTHOR BIO
Loren Talbot is INELDA’s Director of Communication and Partnerships