Nobody can tell the stories of children’s hospitals better than young patients and their families.
Family Advocacy Day is an annual, national event sponsored by the National Association of Children’s Hospitals (NACH) that enables children’s hospital patients and their families to make their voices heard to leaders on Capitol Hill on important pediatric care issues. This year, events in Washington, DC will take place on July 25-26.
Children’s Hospital Boston is proud to participate in this event every year by traveling to Washington, DC with patient families from the New England states. This year, we are traveling with multiple families. We will also be joined by pediatric health care providers from Children’s Hospital Boston. The perspective and insights on the health care system that this group can offer will help to inform legislators about the many ways public policy impacts their constituents and institutions like Children’s Hospital Boston. We believe that it is important for our elected officials, who make daily decisions impacting children’s health care, to hear directly from families and providers.
Participating families and staff from Children’s Hospital Boston will ask Congress to reauthorize the Children’s Hospital Graduate Medical Education program, which provides federal support for the training activities at children’s teaching hospitals. This program is critical to maintaining a skilled workforce of pediatricians and pediatric specialists in the nation. They will also advocate for policy solutions that protect the long term viability of the Medicaid program, which serves a safety net for the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including children.
Read blog posts from Family Advocacy Day 2011, 2010 and 2009.
Visit NACH’s 2011 All-Star blog.
