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Advocacy
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Advocacy
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2022-04-28T00:00:00.0000000
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Language: EN.
Segment:1 Introductions.
SIMON INGER: Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming back for our third session on 'Advocacy'. And in the Chair is Cindy Sparrow. And I shall pass the handover to her immediately. Thanks very much.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you, Simon. And good morning, everyone-- good afternoon, depending on what part of the world you're joining us from. [INAUDIBLE] the Society Street virtual conference today and for tuning into our session. [INAUDIBLE] advocacy discussion panel today. Advocacy is central to many societies' activities, and it's one of the most important things we can do [INAUDIBLE] industries. We have three people joining us today, all of whom have been advocating and influencing in their industries for many years.
CINDY SPARROW: Welcome and thank you to our panelists-- Susan Dentzer, Seth Denbo, and Elizabeth Landau. I'll let them introduce themselves one by one, and then we'll dive into discussion. Why don't we start with Susan?
SUSAN DENTZER: Hi everybody, I'm Susan Dentzer. I'm a Senior Policy Fellow at the Duke University Health Policy Center, which is called the Margolis Health Policy Center. We're actually based in Washington, DC, not in Durham, where the rest of the university is. And I'm a longstanding communications person. I was an on-air-- the on-air health correspondent for the PBS NewsHour for many years.
SUSAN DENTZER: I went on to become the editor in chief of Health Affairs journal. And I've had a long-standing presence on nonprofit boards of organizations that conduct a lot of advocacy including, for example, Research America, which advances the cause of biomedical research in the United States and around the world. So delightful to be with all of you today.
SUSAN DENTZER: I think Seth is going to introduce himself next?
SETH DENBO: Hi, everyone. I'm Seth Denbo. I'm the Director of Scholarly Communication and digital initiatives for the American Historical Association. As many of you who work in small nonprofits know, when you look at your job description and it says "other duties as needed," take that very seriously. We all do everything.
SETH DENBO: And one of my many hats is participating in a variety of advocacy activities that the association undertakes. And I will say more about all that when I've-- as I-- when I give my little spiel in a bit.
CINDY SPARROW: [INAUDIBLE]
ELIZABETH LANDAU: Hi, everyone. I'm Elizabeth Landau. I'm the Director of Public Affairs at AGU, a society of Earth and space scientists. I've been with AGU for about 12 years, now. Originally, I started in the sciences as my background. And now, I've been working to connect scientists and policymakers and build up our grassroots program for the last 12 years. Looking forward to telling you more about our program.
ELIZABETH LANDAU:
CINDY SPARROW: We'll turn it over to Susan.
Segment:2 Susan Dentzer.
SUSAN DENTZER: Great. And if you all could bring up my slides, that would be terrific. So as I mentioned, I've-- have had a lot of presence in the advocacy sphere in various respects over time, and also as a communications professional and a journalist. I'm going to be speaking today, really, about seizing the moment to elevate one's advocacy to a new level-- not so much because the cause wasn't always important, but because the world is finally willing to listen.
SUSAN DENTZER: And I'm going to draw on some lessons from the current COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how I think that's possible. It's not possible for everybody all the time, but I do think for most societies and most causes, a moment usually does come around. And it's very important, at that point, to spring into action and take advantage of the opportunity to really drive one's advocacy points home.
SUSAN DENTZER: So it won't be news to anybody on this conference today that you might have the most interesting things, as far as you're concerned, to say, but the world often isn't always listening. And often, long stretches of time go by when it seems as if something that is so obvious to you is not getting out to the public or the-- into the policy process generally. So that's not new.
SUSAN DENTZER: The world often isn't listening to what any of us have to say at any level. However, sometimes, it finally does start listening. And there are opportunities when, if you're really poised to take advantage of them, you can, as I said a moment ago, get your point across and finally be heard. And I think, for a lot of the science community and the public health community, obviously, this is one of those moments.
SUSAN DENTZER: I mentioned that one of the boards I serve on is that of Research America which, as I said, advances biomedical research, advocates on behalf of biomedical research. And not just biomedical research, but health-related research broadly. So we care deeply about the work that is done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-- anybody who is doing anything important around health-related research, in addition to the National Institutes of Health and other more biomedical research, we deeply care about and advocate for-- and have a very broad group of members across not just the academic community, but also a lot of commercial entities that care deeply about research-- for example, the biopharmaceutical sector.
SUSAN DENTZER: So Research America has been conducting polling for a very, very long time to gauge the public understanding of the importance of research, and has published these polling results over many, many years. And not surprisingly, we find, whether it's that work particularly, whether it's other work that we did in conjunction with a scientific research honor society, that the public although cares very broadly and understands, broadly, the importance of biomedical research, other signals don't always seem that positive.
SUSAN DENTZER: So for example, if you look at the results of this research among the scientific community, they detect a lack of scientific appreciation and literacy among the general public. So this goes hand-in-hand with the notion that generally, the public is really on board with scientific research and biomedical research, but they just don't understand a whole lot about it.
SUSAN DENTZER: And there are significant swaths of the public that don't even care about scientific-- science, as we well know. So it's a complicated picture. It's not straightforward. There's a general sense that this is good, but we don't understand much about it. And we're able to be very confused about it. And frankly, we're able to really be manipulated, particularly when it comes to issues around science.
SUSAN DENTZER: And you can see that in vaccine denial, among other phenomena. So nonetheless, along with a lot of other organizations, Research America and others have been encouraging standing up for science. This is the logo of the Union of Concerned Scientists that is on board with this very obvious proposition. Many of us engaged in the 'March for Science' a couple of years ago in Washington, DC, to advocate for the importance of science-- again, to try to seize the popular imagination of how important all of these activities were.
SUSAN DENTZER: And of course, in the current environment in particular, where science seems to have been so dismissed, particularly around issues like climate change, having these very simple memes, if you will, to get across the importance of science has been a very important and powerful set of advocacy tools for all sorts of entities. For those of you who don't know what chem trails are, chem trails are believed by some to be these trails of smoke that are spewed out of aircraft that are put there by the nefarious federal government and other governments around the world, allegedly, that are trying to poison or otherwise harm people.
SUSAN DENTZER: Of course, most of us accept the notion that chem trails do not exist. So that's what that is a reference to. Now, as we know, amid the current COVID-19 outbreaks-- outbreak, science has struggled to be heard. And we know that Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been the face of this-- literally the face of this, as he has often struggled to present science-based health messages in the midst of an environment that has not been utterly conducive to getting that across.
SUSAN DENTZER: And we know that now, in particular, very confusing messages around the necessary duration of social distancing as we attempt to flatten the curve of the pandemic spread. Now, what's interesting about all of this is that there does seem to be a belief that-- or at least, I should say, more than a belief. There seems to be evidence that much of the public understands the importance of flattening the curve and that entire concept, and the contribution of social distancing to that.
SUSAN DENTZER: And this is just an example of a recent survey that was done, reported in Axios. And it shows that a lot of the public does accept that this is going to work. But it's highly correlated, not surprisingly, with education. So figuring out that you're understanding that your message is already going to be well absorbed by certain well-educated people, particularly if you're talking about science, seems to be rather straightforward.
SUSAN DENTZER: It's just that there is the rest of the population to come to grips with, as well. It is also true, I think, that not only-- and we have clear, just empirical evidence that not only that-- do some people are-- some people receiving these scientific messages, now, they are acting on them. And this is just an example of-- this is from unicast.com, which is a tool that was created by some very smart computer geeks who had created a music streaming service previously.
SUSAN DENTZER: They've now turned their attention to using-- taking broader sets of data and aggregating them to understand particular situations going on among the public at any point in time. And what they've done in this-- with this application is to try to understand how broadly social distancing activity's actually taking place across the country. And you can see here, they picked up signals from, truly, tens of millions of-- well, probably trillions of bits of data from tens of millions of mobile phones to aggregate a picture of how people are decreasing their mobility.
SUSAN DENTZER: And they've graded sections of the country accordingly. Now, nobody's going to insist that this is a perfect tool at this point, but it does tend to demonstrate that there are big parts of the country where people really are staying put, juxtaposed against other parts of the country where people are not doing anything close to that. We'll see what happens over time. And as you can see if you go on the site, you will see various states and communities graded accordingly.
SUSAN DENTZER: Now, why-- what this all tells you, I think, is that if you're an entity right now who wants to advocate around any aspect of this pandemic and your society's or others' interest in this pandemic, this is your time. And fortunately, that message has not been lost on many, many, many entities. This is from the Infectious Disease Society of America. And within about a day of President Trump saying I think we can probably relax most social distancing standards around the country by Easter, IDSA and a colleague organization immediately came out with a statement on why that was not a good idea.
SUSAN DENTZER: And of course, Infectious Disease Society of America has been advocating for any of a number of activities to prevent the spread of infectious disease for decades, including, of course, a huge commitment for-- to hand hygiene across the health care system. But now, the world is receptive to hearing these kinds of messages. And so that ability for them to really, very quickly springboard and get this statement out just underscores the importance of being able to seize the moment.
SUSAN DENTZER: Now, is anybody going to listen to them? Well, let's hope the president is listening. But even if the president is listening, also thinking about getting this message out to the collective community and basically reaching out to their own members and bringing them together at this moment to understand the importance of this moment. This is the time to really embed in the public the understanding of how infectious disease spreads, why social distancing and other public health interventions are so important at this time, et cetera, et cetera.
SUSAN DENTZER: So just to conclude, "opportunity," as the rapper Eminem said, "may only come once in a lifetime." Let us hope, for many of us who are engaged in any element of advocacy, it will come more frequently than once in a lifetime. But the importance of being ready when the world is ready to hear your messages in a new and different way, in a very timely way, and understanding as societies generally that it is very important to be ready for those moments, I think, is just the obvious message that I want to leave everybody with today.
SUSAN DENTZER: And with that, I'll look forward to hearing, I guess, from Seth, who will be next.
Segment:3 Seth Denbo.
SETH DENBO: Hi, everyone. So we were as a-- when we were chatting, members of the panel were chatting about what we were going to try and do here today, was-- we were asked to address the question of why advocacy is important. I think Susan has done a very good job of talking about the ways in which advocacy is being used by certain kinds of organizations in the current crisis.
SETH DENBO: And I think that's really, really valuable. But I want to talk more broadly about this question. And I think-- at the American Historical Association, we advocate for the departments of history in public culture because it is really central to our mission as an organization. We were chartered by Congress in 1889. One of the things we were chartered to do was the promotion of historical studies. And we're now the largest-- over 150 or so, 130 or so years later, we're one of the largest organizations of historians in the world.
SETH DENBO: We have 10,000-- excuse me-- [CLEARING THROAT] --12,000 members in a very wide range of professions, mostly in North America, but also some around the world, and a growing number of members around the world. And this promotion of historical studies is a very broad category. And one of the things we see as vital to the work we do is advocating for the work historians do, but also advocating for the use of history in public culture.
SETH DENBO: So I want to take us back a little bit to our opening plenary, which-- where our two speakers talked about change and how to effect change. And really, this is the core of what historians do. Understanding when, how, and why change happens in the past, or has happened in the past is really what we do as historians.
SETH DENBO: And so I want to talk a little bit about what change has to do with advocacy, and then talk a bit about the kinds of advocacy we've done as an organization, and continue to do. So advocacy happens because a group of people, however large or influential or whatever, think that something is not right or something needs protecting. So for example, the AHA advocates for more funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities because we feel that humanities are underfunded and undervalued in American society.
SETH DENBO: And we want to do something about that. And federal funding for the NEH, which then disperses funding to all kinds of organizations both within the academy and in small museums, local history sites around the country, is really valuable for improving the ways in which humanities and public humanities is used and studied and experienced in this country.
SETH DENBO: In 2017, the AHA put out a statement on Confederate monuments, because historians need to have a voice in contemporary issues where history matters. And I'm thinking a little bit about what Susan's just been saying-- that was really our moment. That was the moment when the whole-- after Charlottesville, after the Charlottesville riots, that was really the moment when the whole country was thinking about these questions about Confederate monuments.
SETH DENBO: And that's an ongoing process. But we issued a statement in which we talked about the history of Confederate monuments and how important it is to know that history, to know who put those monuments up, when they put them up, why they put them up when local communities are making decisions about what to do with those monuments. And so this is an obvious one where history is of central relevance.
SETH DENBO: And it really was. This was a moment when lots of historians were writing in the public sphere. We were encouraging that. We were-- our statement got picked up and used in lots of places. Historians were getting interviewed on news programs and by newspapers. And that really was the moment when-- and as Susan's just been recommending, we seized that moment.
SETH DENBO: And it was-- and we feel it was a very valuable thing to do. We have a set of principles by which we make these kinds of public statements. And I'll talk just about a couple of them quickly. And the first principle is when private or public authorities in the United States or elsewhere threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources. So for example, we advocate for the work of the National Archives in the US.
SETH DENBO: Or recently, when a-- when the French government arbitrarily and fairly immediately, without much consultation, de facto reclassified a lot of historical documents going all the way back to the Second World War-- so we issued a statement. We wrote to the French government, wrote to the defense ministry, which had control over these records to explain why this was a problem and advocate for the opening up of these archives.
SETH DENBO: Another principle for when we make a public stand is when public or private authorities in the United States or elsewhere censor or seek to prevent the writing, publication, exhibition, teaching, or other practices of history. So you can see those are obvious ones where the expertise of the American Historical Association makes sense and where our voice as the largest and oldest association for historians matters and can make a difference.
SETH DENBO: But our work is broader than that-- and this comes back to what I was saying about the Confederate monuments-- and that we use historical expertise in our advocacy to provide perspectives on issues in society and to provide perspectives for policymaking. So the ways in which we do this-- we've issued a-- we've very much ramped up, in the last couple of years, the number of statements we've issued.
SETH DENBO: In the last 12 months, we've issued over 30 statements about various aspects of things in society. We've signed on to amicus briefs in various situations where it's been relevant and where it's-- where history has mattered for the kinds of questions. We've even taken legal action in rare cases ourselves, or been part of suits where-- in rare cases where-- for things like the release of grand jury records that have particular historical significance.
SETH DENBO: I'm thinking of one related to a lynching that we're trying-- in the process of trying to get released. We also conduct congressional briefings. We have a program where we bring historians to Capitol Hill to talk about a particular issue that's of relevance to policy. But advocacy doesn't just take place in congressional office buildings and on Capitol Hill and at that kind of high policy level.
SETH DENBO: We very much encourage our members and other historians to get involved in advocacy work. And this goes back to what some of the speakers in the previous panel, especially Steve Smith, was saying about public engagement. And our members do-- they write op eds in local newspapers, get themselves on local radio programs, and advocate for things that are relevant to their local society.
SETH DENBO: And we also have a program that we sponsor that is built around our congressional briefings program, where we encourage history professors to do similar kinds of things in their classroom. And one really great example of it was a group of students at York College in York, Pennsylvania, which is a community where there's been a lot of poverty over the years. And these students put together a whole program of briefings where they met with city government leadership to talk about the kinds of policies that have been developed over the years in this-- in this town to deal with poverty and why they haven't worked.
SETH DENBO: So it was looking back at the history of their own community. And these were undergraduates really advocating for change in their own community. And then I'll talk-- the role of historians isn't necessarily obvious in the current health crisis, but we continue to view history as vital to American public culture. And really understanding the situation in which we find ourselves requires knowing about the past, knowing about how we got here.
SETH DENBO: So public health has a history. Public health is very much a historical field, in many ways. Pandemics have a history. And we need to learn from previous pandemics and continue our advocacy work to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself the next time we find ourselves in a pandemic-- that we're learning from the lessons of this. And I think I've got a particularly egregious example to finish up with of lack of an understanding of history and where it can lead.
SETH DENBO: On March 6, in a-- when he was in Atlanta speaking about the pandemic, our president said-- asked the question, does anybody die from flu? I didn't know people died from the flu. Well, actually, Donald Trump's paternal grandfather died in 1918, and he died from the Spanish flu. So knowledge is vital to fixing problems in our society. And advocacy works by societies is a central aspect of transmitting knowledge to effect positive change.
SETH DENBO: Thank you.
Segment:4 Elizabeth Landau.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: --Susan and Seth for those inspiring stories of change and advocacy at your organizations. Like many other associations, AGU has a small government relations team that, historically, has been really focused on working directly with policymakers on behalf of its members. But over time, in keeping with the theme of today's conference, our program has changed.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We also now fold in a really robust grassroots engagement program, as well. And I want to talk a little bit about that today. We have built our grassroots program as we saw more opportunity and support grow within our membership for that type of program. And this really culminated in the creation of our Voices for Science program. About three years ago is when we launched that.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And it was a pivot that we made when we saw a groundswell of interest from our membership in something that was more engaging, more long-term, more robust. So I'm going to provide a very brief case study on this program in the hopes that it's a potential model for others. So the goal of this program is really to create and support a network of skilled and dedicated scientists who are ready to share their science with a variety of important audiences, from policymakers to media to others in their community.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It really came through increased enthusiasm and dedication for policy engagement starting in 2017. And we wanted to provide that next-level arc of engagement, because we saw that a lot of our one-off events weren't leading to real relationship building. So scientists would come in and do congressional visits day or some other type of activity with us one time, and they wouldn't have that long-term relationship that we really wanted to build between our scientists and policymakers.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: So this program is definitely built for those scientists who want to be more engaged. We take 30 to 40 advocates from strategic locations each year for this program. We have two tracks. One is in communications and one is in policy. The scientists must commit to performing at least one outreach activity per month. Something can be communications or policy oriented each month, depending on what they're interested in.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: But we give them specific training on one of those topics in particular. We really created this program to make participants feel valued and to make them feel like they're part of something exclusive and special. We have a kickoff training session that helps build community by bringing all of the scientists together in one location. And we give them a full year of support afterwards, which I'll talk a little bit more about.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It's been amazing to see what the scientists have been able to achieve. Over the first two years of the program, we've had 65 scientists participate. And they have engaged in over 1,250 outreach actions over that time period. They've engaged over 25,000 people directly, which has been incredible and surpassed our expectations, absolutely.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And then online, indirectly, they've engaged over eight million people just over this period of two years. We've also been surveying them frequently throughout the program. And the surveys really show a clear, demonstrated increase in the frequency of outreach and the feeling of community that they have with each other in feeling like they're leading others in outreach, which is a critical aspect of this program-- to ensure that they are not just performing outreach themselves, but then each of them is impacting more and more others in their field.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And they also feel more institutional support through the program than they did before, which is very exciting, because we know that oftentimes in the sciences, there isn't a lot of support for outreach work institutionally. There's a lot of value to our membership in this program. We definitely built this program to try and incentivize them to be engaged. They come out to Washington, DC for a full two-day training, all expenses paid by AGU.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And this allows them to have this real connection with the other scientists who are part of the program and gives them that solid core foundation that they need to do the outreach work. We also provide what we call tenure letters to their institutions. We send letters at the beginning of the program letting their institutions know that they are part of this program and that AGU fully supports them and that we think this is incredibly important for them to do for the scientific community at large.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We want to show the institutions that this is something they should be doing and that it's a critical, valued aspect of their work as scientists. We host monthly phone calls with small groups of the scientists so that every single month you're checking in, you're being held accountable for the work that you're doing, and you have resources and information from AGU and from your fellow scientists to help you keep going throughout the year.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We promote their accomplishments as much as we can. We put them in our publications that we put out to our membership to show off what great work they're doing. We publicize their work online, through social media and other means. We provide them free registration to our big annual meeting every year. And we provide them with opportunities to apply for micro grants throughout the year.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: So these might be small events that they want to host at their local institution. They can apply for grants between $100 and $1,000 to put on a science policy talk at their institution, and maybe offer lunch for people to come out. So it's a great way to give them the resources to do a little more than they might be able to do on their own. They really become part of an exclusive network and community as part of this program, which makes them feel like they're VIPs.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It makes them really appreciate the program-- and also get to know other scientists who are focused on outreach, advocacy, and make them feel like they're part of that community, and encourages them to keep working. The institutions have really been thrilled and impressed. We've seen a number of them produce publications or post something on their website about the fact that their scientist was part of this program.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: They're really excited about it, which is great to be able to build that reputation. And we found that our participants are just incredibly grateful. One thing we didn't expect was, the very first time that we hosted this program, they started the morning saying a huge thank you to us at AGU for creating this program. So that's been really wonderful.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: The program's also been great for AGU's reputation. We're providing hope, confidence, and inspiration to our membership. They're seeing this as something wonderful that AGU is doing in addition to the other programs that we have available to them. And we're creating new advocates who engage others and speak well of AGU. When we've been able to give them so much as part of this program, they want to speak well of us to others.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And other societies are definitely taking notice. I've been asked to give a number of presentations on the topic, and we have a number of other societies who are starting similar programs. From the membership, we're hearing a lot about how this really makes them feel empowered. I wouldn't have been able to do this if not for being part of this program. I wouldn't have tried to apply for this additional position, or something like that.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And they've become great advocates both for our sciences and for AGU. I just want to end on a quote from one of our Voices for Science advocates from the program. She stated, "the fact that AGU created this program has stressed the importance of what communicating science as well as teaching and doing science-- provides for me just a little bit of legitimacy that mid-career professionals like myself never had when we expressed our interests in doing outreach at the university.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We can now not just say I do this because I think it's important, we say, AGU has prioritized this kind of work, and we are going to change science in this generation." And I hope that this is inspiring to some of those who may be considering a similar program at their association. I think it's been just incredible the amount of support and appreciation that we've gotten for this program so far.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And I think it's incredible value to our membership. So I'm looking forward to talking about how we have been pivoting, both with this program changing to a virtual launch rather than an in-person launch coming up next week, and more about what we're doing in terms of advocacy. Great. Thank you all.
Segment:5 Q&As.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you so much, Susan. We do have a question from the audience that I [INAUDIBLE] "What should societies or advocates consider when navigating advocacy work now, if it's not related to the current crisis?" We can start with Elizabeth. What do you have to say on that?
ELIZABETH LANDAU: [INAUDIBLE] I think this is a great question, and something that we have absolutely been dealing with-- as, I'm sure, other societies have, as well. And we've been talking with a few other organizations about, what are we doing now? How are we pivoting? We obviously have to change things that we had planned. And we have-- we really feel that right now, we need a connection with others and we need to communicate more than ever.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It's really critical to assess how you are communicating with other groups, with your members. And we're all figuring out what that looks like in this moment. We have to understand that it's not going to be perfect from the very beginning, but we are working. And together, over time, we will improve on how we're able to respond. We're trying to figure out, what is appropriate for us to share now?
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We're looking at all of the plans we had coming up. For example, we have an election website trying to get our members to engage in the election. And our plan was, this month, that we want to encourage our members to volunteer for a campaign. But now we're saying, volunteer to phone bank from your home, or volunteer to get people to sign up to vote from your home. We've had to pivot and figure out what it is that we can ask our members to do as part of this new normal.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: But I think the critical thing is to make sure that you are not being tone deaf to the situation, but that we do understand and keep up advocacy, because it's so critical in this time-- I think more than ever.
CINDY SPARROW: --from you?
SUSAN DENTZER: I would agree. I think Liz nailed it. Be sensitive that unless you can somehow tie your advocacy, at the moment, to this terrible crisis, probably time to take a little bit of a step back. But probably not for long. We know that the news cycle changes really quickly. And look at China-- essentially, they had a two-month completely horrific experience, and then have put a lot of that behind them-- not entirely, and not in all aspects of that enormous country.
SUSAN DENTZER: But the wheel will turn, and there will be time to get your message out.
CINDY SPARROW: Over to you for a response.
SETH DENBO: I absolutely agree that maybe this is a time-- it depends on what you're working on and what your-- what the timeliness of the advocacy work you're doing is. But I also think-- this affects us all and affects all of our members in different kinds of ways. And it depends what you're defining as advocacy. We recently signed on to a statement put out by a bunch of different large associations-- I think it was actually initiated by the American Sociological Association-- advocating for our members in terms of professional issues-- asking their universities to consider lengthening things like tenure clocks so that people have-- so that, given that this is an interruption in their work, in the way we all work, that institutions need to account for that when thinking about things like how they evaluate and promote their employees.
SETH DENBO: So we were advocating for our members in a specific way related to the crisis. So I think it's worth thinking about the ways in which this affects us all and who you're advocating for and what your advocacy work is. And I think reengaging with your members, as Liz said, is really vital-- understanding how this crisis is affecting them. And that will involve certain kinds of advocacy.
SETH DENBO:
CINDY SPARROW: Another question from the audience. With the AGU's focus on sustainability, climate change, and health equity [INAUDIBLE] will be very relevant [INAUDIBLE]
ELIZABETH LANDAU: Sorry, you're cutting out a little bit. Would you mind repeating that, please?
CINDY SPARROW: So the question is with the AGU's focus on sustainability, climate change, and health equity, do you think that the effects of having humans across the world stop moving will be very relevant and a focus for researchers?
ELIZABETH LANDAU: Yeah, absolutely. I've already seen some preliminary thoughts on what might happen in terms of climate change impacts from what's been happening because of COVID-19 and the fact that people aren't, say, going out, driving their cars, purchasing things, production stopping. A lot of things that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions have paused. The very early predictions that I have seen think that there may be a dip which will just bounce right back to where we were beforehand.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: But I know that there will be many scientists who are interested in looking at what those effects are over the short term, while people are in quarantine, and also longer term. Perhaps there are some shifts that we're going to make longer term, like having more people telecommute more frequently than we used to before, do more remote work. So it'll be interesting to see, long term, what we wind up seeing.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: I think a lot of scientists are going to want to research that.
CINDY SPARROW: Turn it over to the other panelists.
SUSAN DENTZER: Nothing to add there.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you. I do have a question [INAUDIBLE] specifically for Susan. Do you see an overall increase in science funding happening after this crisis? We're seeing governments around the world [INAUDIBLE] more long-term investments, such as in France. Do you have anything to say about that?
SUSAN DENTZER: Yes. I think it's-- well, to speak for the United States, of course, when I first moved to Washington many years ago, a very smart person told me, never trust anybody who tells you what Congress will do, because that person will surely lie to you about other things, as well. And of course, it is very difficult, at this point, to predict the future of federal policy in just about any regard. That said, I think we've already seen enactment of legislation that has boosted funding, in particular, for NIAID, Tony Fauci's Institute for vaccine development, other aspects of its very important work.
SUSAN DENTZER: I think we're going to see some restoration of funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose budget has pretty much been decimated over the last 10 years, in particular. So I think the answer is yes, that there will be more money being-- in the future going to these very important priorities. On the other hand, as we know, we have extraordinarily large federal budget deficits, which we are going to enlargen even more with this fiscal response.
SUSAN DENTZER: I think that's important at this time. But what that means when the dust has settled and we're staring at these extremely large federal budget deficits-- you could see some voices saying, no, it's time to batten down the hatches and not necessarily expand federal research at NIH or elsewhere. I hope that doesn't happen, but you wouldn't want to rule that out.
SUSAN DENTZER: So I think it's another tip off that this will be a very important time for advocates for science and for biomedical research, in particular, to be at the ready to make the argument that we need to make some much greater investments in our-- not just in our biomedical research capacity, but in particular, our public health response capacity. And if we haven't seen a more important lesson of why we should doing-- do that than the COVID-19 pandemic, I don't know what else we could dream up to drive those points home.
SUSAN DENTZER:
CINDY SPARROW: [INAUDIBLE] can you still hear me?
SUSAN DENTZER: Yeah.
CINDY SPARROW: One more question from the audience. We probably have time for this last one. For our panelists, do any of your organizations have programs particularly focused on school-age children that inform, educate, and involve directly in things like hospital [INAUDIBLE] historical context relative to current and other issues and healthy communities, perhaps related to climate change?
SUSAN DENTZER: That's a good question. I'm, frankly, not that familiar with programs aimed at school-aged children generally except insofar as I would say that, if we're talking about secondary school children, there's a lot of very accessible material being created on health policy in particular, now, by the Kaiser Family Foundation. So I would say, again, assuming you've got a bright crop of secondary school students, I would point them to KFF.org, Kaiser Family Foundation dot org, for some really good material on health policy, in particular.
SUSAN DENTZER: And I'm sure there are analogous, really well-written, well-crafted, publicly available websites in some of these other areas, as well. I'll turn it over to Liz and Seth to comment on that.
SETH DENBO: We don't have any specific programs like that. What we have been doing is encouraging, over time-- over a long period of time, better links across between university-level history education and K through 12 education, to the point where we're even referring to-- many of us are referring to it as K through 16 education, that it's a long-term historical curriculum. And that's not just during history, but-- And I think the ways in which history is taught these days is very-- has changed a lot from the very facts and dates and long term and presidents and kings and queens and battles to a much more history that is focused on its relevance to particular communities, how those communities have changed, and much more local concerns about how your-- how history has evolved in your community.
SETH DENBO: So part of that would be involved in these kinds of-- the importance of historical context for understanding the way your community is and the way your community has evolved.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: --the AGU, we don't have a program that focuses particularly for-- on K through 12 with this type of work. We do have a geo health section at AGU which is relatively new which is focusing on the intersection of environmental health, climate change, all of that. And so I think they likely have some resources that might be useful within that section. And we also have-- as was mentioned in one of the earlier presentations today, AGU has a Thriving Earth Exchange program where we work to connect scientists and communities and solve local solutions-based problems with those communities.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And so I think a lot of the work that gets done there involves communities of all ages. So I think we have a few things that are tangential, but nothing directed towards K through 12.
CINDY SPARROW: And thank you to our panelists for joining us this morning and sharing all your insight and best practices with us. And I think [INAUDIBLE] recording will be available of this session afterwards for attendees who want to replay or get more information. And [INAUDIBLE] Susan, Seth, and Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And that takes us to the end of our session.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you.
SUSAN DENTZER: Thank you.
Segment:1 Introductions.
SIMON INGER: Hi, everybody. Thank you for coming back for our third session on 'Advocacy'. And in the Chair is Cindy Sparrow. And I shall pass the handover to her immediately. Thanks very much.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you, Simon. And good morning, everyone-- good afternoon, depending on what part of the world you're joining us from. [INAUDIBLE] the Society Street virtual conference today and for tuning into our session. [INAUDIBLE] advocacy discussion panel today. Advocacy is central to many societies' activities, and it's one of the most important things we can do [INAUDIBLE] industries. We have three people joining us today, all of whom have been advocating and influencing in their industries for many years.
CINDY SPARROW: Welcome and thank you to our panelists-- Susan Dentzer, Seth Denbo, and Elizabeth Landau. I'll let them introduce themselves one by one, and then we'll dive into discussion. Why don't we start with Susan?
SUSAN DENTZER: Hi everybody, I'm Susan Dentzer. I'm a Senior Policy Fellow at the Duke University Health Policy Center, which is called the Margolis Health Policy Center. We're actually based in Washington, DC, not in Durham, where the rest of the university is. And I'm a longstanding communications person. I was an on-air-- the on-air health correspondent for the PBS NewsHour for many years.
SUSAN DENTZER: I went on to become the editor in chief of Health Affairs journal. And I've had a long-standing presence on nonprofit boards of organizations that conduct a lot of advocacy including, for example, Research America, which advances the cause of biomedical research in the United States and around the world. So delightful to be with all of you today.
SUSAN DENTZER: I think Seth is going to introduce himself next?
SETH DENBO: Hi, everyone. I'm Seth Denbo. I'm the Director of Scholarly Communication and digital initiatives for the American Historical Association. As many of you who work in small nonprofits know, when you look at your job description and it says "other duties as needed," take that very seriously. We all do everything.
SETH DENBO: And one of my many hats is participating in a variety of advocacy activities that the association undertakes. And I will say more about all that when I've-- as I-- when I give my little spiel in a bit.
CINDY SPARROW: [INAUDIBLE]
ELIZABETH LANDAU: Hi, everyone. I'm Elizabeth Landau. I'm the Director of Public Affairs at AGU, a society of Earth and space scientists. I've been with AGU for about 12 years, now. Originally, I started in the sciences as my background. And now, I've been working to connect scientists and policymakers and build up our grassroots program for the last 12 years. Looking forward to telling you more about our program.
ELIZABETH LANDAU:
CINDY SPARROW: We'll turn it over to Susan.
Segment:2 Susan Dentzer.
SUSAN DENTZER: Great. And if you all could bring up my slides, that would be terrific. So as I mentioned, I've-- have had a lot of presence in the advocacy sphere in various respects over time, and also as a communications professional and a journalist. I'm going to be speaking today, really, about seizing the moment to elevate one's advocacy to a new level-- not so much because the cause wasn't always important, but because the world is finally willing to listen.
SUSAN DENTZER: And I'm going to draw on some lessons from the current COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate how I think that's possible. It's not possible for everybody all the time, but I do think for most societies and most causes, a moment usually does come around. And it's very important, at that point, to spring into action and take advantage of the opportunity to really drive one's advocacy points home.
SUSAN DENTZER: So it won't be news to anybody on this conference today that you might have the most interesting things, as far as you're concerned, to say, but the world often isn't always listening. And often, long stretches of time go by when it seems as if something that is so obvious to you is not getting out to the public or the-- into the policy process generally. So that's not new.
SUSAN DENTZER: The world often isn't listening to what any of us have to say at any level. However, sometimes, it finally does start listening. And there are opportunities when, if you're really poised to take advantage of them, you can, as I said a moment ago, get your point across and finally be heard. And I think, for a lot of the science community and the public health community, obviously, this is one of those moments.
SUSAN DENTZER: I mentioned that one of the boards I serve on is that of Research America which, as I said, advances biomedical research, advocates on behalf of biomedical research. And not just biomedical research, but health-related research broadly. So we care deeply about the work that is done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality-- anybody who is doing anything important around health-related research, in addition to the National Institutes of Health and other more biomedical research, we deeply care about and advocate for-- and have a very broad group of members across not just the academic community, but also a lot of commercial entities that care deeply about research-- for example, the biopharmaceutical sector.
SUSAN DENTZER: So Research America has been conducting polling for a very, very long time to gauge the public understanding of the importance of research, and has published these polling results over many, many years. And not surprisingly, we find, whether it's that work particularly, whether it's other work that we did in conjunction with a scientific research honor society, that the public although cares very broadly and understands, broadly, the importance of biomedical research, other signals don't always seem that positive.
SUSAN DENTZER: So for example, if you look at the results of this research among the scientific community, they detect a lack of scientific appreciation and literacy among the general public. So this goes hand-in-hand with the notion that generally, the public is really on board with scientific research and biomedical research, but they just don't understand a whole lot about it.
SUSAN DENTZER: And there are significant swaths of the public that don't even care about scientific-- science, as we well know. So it's a complicated picture. It's not straightforward. There's a general sense that this is good, but we don't understand much about it. And we're able to be very confused about it. And frankly, we're able to really be manipulated, particularly when it comes to issues around science.
SUSAN DENTZER: And you can see that in vaccine denial, among other phenomena. So nonetheless, along with a lot of other organizations, Research America and others have been encouraging standing up for science. This is the logo of the Union of Concerned Scientists that is on board with this very obvious proposition. Many of us engaged in the 'March for Science' a couple of years ago in Washington, DC, to advocate for the importance of science-- again, to try to seize the popular imagination of how important all of these activities were.
SUSAN DENTZER: And of course, in the current environment in particular, where science seems to have been so dismissed, particularly around issues like climate change, having these very simple memes, if you will, to get across the importance of science has been a very important and powerful set of advocacy tools for all sorts of entities. For those of you who don't know what chem trails are, chem trails are believed by some to be these trails of smoke that are spewed out of aircraft that are put there by the nefarious federal government and other governments around the world, allegedly, that are trying to poison or otherwise harm people.
SUSAN DENTZER: Of course, most of us accept the notion that chem trails do not exist. So that's what that is a reference to. Now, as we know, amid the current COVID-19 outbreaks-- outbreak, science has struggled to be heard. And we know that Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been the face of this-- literally the face of this, as he has often struggled to present science-based health messages in the midst of an environment that has not been utterly conducive to getting that across.
SUSAN DENTZER: And we know that now, in particular, very confusing messages around the necessary duration of social distancing as we attempt to flatten the curve of the pandemic spread. Now, what's interesting about all of this is that there does seem to be a belief that-- or at least, I should say, more than a belief. There seems to be evidence that much of the public understands the importance of flattening the curve and that entire concept, and the contribution of social distancing to that.
SUSAN DENTZER: And this is just an example of a recent survey that was done, reported in Axios. And it shows that a lot of the public does accept that this is going to work. But it's highly correlated, not surprisingly, with education. So figuring out that you're understanding that your message is already going to be well absorbed by certain well-educated people, particularly if you're talking about science, seems to be rather straightforward.
SUSAN DENTZER: It's just that there is the rest of the population to come to grips with, as well. It is also true, I think, that not only-- and we have clear, just empirical evidence that not only that-- do some people are-- some people receiving these scientific messages, now, they are acting on them. And this is just an example of-- this is from unicast.com, which is a tool that was created by some very smart computer geeks who had created a music streaming service previously.
SUSAN DENTZER: They've now turned their attention to using-- taking broader sets of data and aggregating them to understand particular situations going on among the public at any point in time. And what they've done in this-- with this application is to try to understand how broadly social distancing activity's actually taking place across the country. And you can see here, they picked up signals from, truly, tens of millions of-- well, probably trillions of bits of data from tens of millions of mobile phones to aggregate a picture of how people are decreasing their mobility.
SUSAN DENTZER: And they've graded sections of the country accordingly. Now, nobody's going to insist that this is a perfect tool at this point, but it does tend to demonstrate that there are big parts of the country where people really are staying put, juxtaposed against other parts of the country where people are not doing anything close to that. We'll see what happens over time. And as you can see if you go on the site, you will see various states and communities graded accordingly.
SUSAN DENTZER: Now, why-- what this all tells you, I think, is that if you're an entity right now who wants to advocate around any aspect of this pandemic and your society's or others' interest in this pandemic, this is your time. And fortunately, that message has not been lost on many, many, many entities. This is from the Infectious Disease Society of America. And within about a day of President Trump saying I think we can probably relax most social distancing standards around the country by Easter, IDSA and a colleague organization immediately came out with a statement on why that was not a good idea.
SUSAN DENTZER: And of course, Infectious Disease Society of America has been advocating for any of a number of activities to prevent the spread of infectious disease for decades, including, of course, a huge commitment for-- to hand hygiene across the health care system. But now, the world is receptive to hearing these kinds of messages. And so that ability for them to really, very quickly springboard and get this statement out just underscores the importance of being able to seize the moment.
SUSAN DENTZER: Now, is anybody going to listen to them? Well, let's hope the president is listening. But even if the president is listening, also thinking about getting this message out to the collective community and basically reaching out to their own members and bringing them together at this moment to understand the importance of this moment. This is the time to really embed in the public the understanding of how infectious disease spreads, why social distancing and other public health interventions are so important at this time, et cetera, et cetera.
SUSAN DENTZER: So just to conclude, "opportunity," as the rapper Eminem said, "may only come once in a lifetime." Let us hope, for many of us who are engaged in any element of advocacy, it will come more frequently than once in a lifetime. But the importance of being ready when the world is ready to hear your messages in a new and different way, in a very timely way, and understanding as societies generally that it is very important to be ready for those moments, I think, is just the obvious message that I want to leave everybody with today.
SUSAN DENTZER: And with that, I'll look forward to hearing, I guess, from Seth, who will be next.
Segment:3 Seth Denbo.
SETH DENBO: Hi, everyone. So we were as a-- when we were chatting, members of the panel were chatting about what we were going to try and do here today, was-- we were asked to address the question of why advocacy is important. I think Susan has done a very good job of talking about the ways in which advocacy is being used by certain kinds of organizations in the current crisis.
SETH DENBO: And I think that's really, really valuable. But I want to talk more broadly about this question. And I think-- at the American Historical Association, we advocate for the departments of history in public culture because it is really central to our mission as an organization. We were chartered by Congress in 1889. One of the things we were chartered to do was the promotion of historical studies. And we're now the largest-- over 150 or so, 130 or so years later, we're one of the largest organizations of historians in the world.
SETH DENBO: We have 10,000-- excuse me-- [CLEARING THROAT] --12,000 members in a very wide range of professions, mostly in North America, but also some around the world, and a growing number of members around the world. And this promotion of historical studies is a very broad category. And one of the things we see as vital to the work we do is advocating for the work historians do, but also advocating for the use of history in public culture.
SETH DENBO: So I want to take us back a little bit to our opening plenary, which-- where our two speakers talked about change and how to effect change. And really, this is the core of what historians do. Understanding when, how, and why change happens in the past, or has happened in the past is really what we do as historians.
SETH DENBO: And so I want to talk a little bit about what change has to do with advocacy, and then talk a bit about the kinds of advocacy we've done as an organization, and continue to do. So advocacy happens because a group of people, however large or influential or whatever, think that something is not right or something needs protecting. So for example, the AHA advocates for more funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities because we feel that humanities are underfunded and undervalued in American society.
SETH DENBO: And we want to do something about that. And federal funding for the NEH, which then disperses funding to all kinds of organizations both within the academy and in small museums, local history sites around the country, is really valuable for improving the ways in which humanities and public humanities is used and studied and experienced in this country.
SETH DENBO: In 2017, the AHA put out a statement on Confederate monuments, because historians need to have a voice in contemporary issues where history matters. And I'm thinking a little bit about what Susan's just been saying-- that was really our moment. That was the moment when the whole-- after Charlottesville, after the Charlottesville riots, that was really the moment when the whole country was thinking about these questions about Confederate monuments.
SETH DENBO: And that's an ongoing process. But we issued a statement in which we talked about the history of Confederate monuments and how important it is to know that history, to know who put those monuments up, when they put them up, why they put them up when local communities are making decisions about what to do with those monuments. And so this is an obvious one where history is of central relevance.
SETH DENBO: And it really was. This was a moment when lots of historians were writing in the public sphere. We were encouraging that. We were-- our statement got picked up and used in lots of places. Historians were getting interviewed on news programs and by newspapers. And that really was the moment when-- and as Susan's just been recommending, we seized that moment.
SETH DENBO: And it was-- and we feel it was a very valuable thing to do. We have a set of principles by which we make these kinds of public statements. And I'll talk just about a couple of them quickly. And the first principle is when private or public authorities in the United States or elsewhere threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources. So for example, we advocate for the work of the National Archives in the US.
SETH DENBO: Or recently, when a-- when the French government arbitrarily and fairly immediately, without much consultation, de facto reclassified a lot of historical documents going all the way back to the Second World War-- so we issued a statement. We wrote to the French government, wrote to the defense ministry, which had control over these records to explain why this was a problem and advocate for the opening up of these archives.
SETH DENBO: Another principle for when we make a public stand is when public or private authorities in the United States or elsewhere censor or seek to prevent the writing, publication, exhibition, teaching, or other practices of history. So you can see those are obvious ones where the expertise of the American Historical Association makes sense and where our voice as the largest and oldest association for historians matters and can make a difference.
SETH DENBO: But our work is broader than that-- and this comes back to what I was saying about the Confederate monuments-- and that we use historical expertise in our advocacy to provide perspectives on issues in society and to provide perspectives for policymaking. So the ways in which we do this-- we've issued a-- we've very much ramped up, in the last couple of years, the number of statements we've issued.
SETH DENBO: In the last 12 months, we've issued over 30 statements about various aspects of things in society. We've signed on to amicus briefs in various situations where it's been relevant and where it's-- where history has mattered for the kinds of questions. We've even taken legal action in rare cases ourselves, or been part of suits where-- in rare cases where-- for things like the release of grand jury records that have particular historical significance.
SETH DENBO: I'm thinking of one related to a lynching that we're trying-- in the process of trying to get released. We also conduct congressional briefings. We have a program where we bring historians to Capitol Hill to talk about a particular issue that's of relevance to policy. But advocacy doesn't just take place in congressional office buildings and on Capitol Hill and at that kind of high policy level.
SETH DENBO: We very much encourage our members and other historians to get involved in advocacy work. And this goes back to what some of the speakers in the previous panel, especially Steve Smith, was saying about public engagement. And our members do-- they write op eds in local newspapers, get themselves on local radio programs, and advocate for things that are relevant to their local society.
SETH DENBO: And we also have a program that we sponsor that is built around our congressional briefings program, where we encourage history professors to do similar kinds of things in their classroom. And one really great example of it was a group of students at York College in York, Pennsylvania, which is a community where there's been a lot of poverty over the years. And these students put together a whole program of briefings where they met with city government leadership to talk about the kinds of policies that have been developed over the years in this-- in this town to deal with poverty and why they haven't worked.
SETH DENBO: So it was looking back at the history of their own community. And these were undergraduates really advocating for change in their own community. And then I'll talk-- the role of historians isn't necessarily obvious in the current health crisis, but we continue to view history as vital to American public culture. And really understanding the situation in which we find ourselves requires knowing about the past, knowing about how we got here.
SETH DENBO: So public health has a history. Public health is very much a historical field, in many ways. Pandemics have a history. And we need to learn from previous pandemics and continue our advocacy work to ensure that history doesn't repeat itself the next time we find ourselves in a pandemic-- that we're learning from the lessons of this. And I think I've got a particularly egregious example to finish up with of lack of an understanding of history and where it can lead.
SETH DENBO: On March 6, in a-- when he was in Atlanta speaking about the pandemic, our president said-- asked the question, does anybody die from flu? I didn't know people died from the flu. Well, actually, Donald Trump's paternal grandfather died in 1918, and he died from the Spanish flu. So knowledge is vital to fixing problems in our society. And advocacy works by societies is a central aspect of transmitting knowledge to effect positive change.
SETH DENBO: Thank you.
Segment:4 Elizabeth Landau.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: --Susan and Seth for those inspiring stories of change and advocacy at your organizations. Like many other associations, AGU has a small government relations team that, historically, has been really focused on working directly with policymakers on behalf of its members. But over time, in keeping with the theme of today's conference, our program has changed.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We also now fold in a really robust grassroots engagement program, as well. And I want to talk a little bit about that today. We have built our grassroots program as we saw more opportunity and support grow within our membership for that type of program. And this really culminated in the creation of our Voices for Science program. About three years ago is when we launched that.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And it was a pivot that we made when we saw a groundswell of interest from our membership in something that was more engaging, more long-term, more robust. So I'm going to provide a very brief case study on this program in the hopes that it's a potential model for others. So the goal of this program is really to create and support a network of skilled and dedicated scientists who are ready to share their science with a variety of important audiences, from policymakers to media to others in their community.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It really came through increased enthusiasm and dedication for policy engagement starting in 2017. And we wanted to provide that next-level arc of engagement, because we saw that a lot of our one-off events weren't leading to real relationship building. So scientists would come in and do congressional visits day or some other type of activity with us one time, and they wouldn't have that long-term relationship that we really wanted to build between our scientists and policymakers.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: So this program is definitely built for those scientists who want to be more engaged. We take 30 to 40 advocates from strategic locations each year for this program. We have two tracks. One is in communications and one is in policy. The scientists must commit to performing at least one outreach activity per month. Something can be communications or policy oriented each month, depending on what they're interested in.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: But we give them specific training on one of those topics in particular. We really created this program to make participants feel valued and to make them feel like they're part of something exclusive and special. We have a kickoff training session that helps build community by bringing all of the scientists together in one location. And we give them a full year of support afterwards, which I'll talk a little bit more about.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It's been amazing to see what the scientists have been able to achieve. Over the first two years of the program, we've had 65 scientists participate. And they have engaged in over 1,250 outreach actions over that time period. They've engaged over 25,000 people directly, which has been incredible and surpassed our expectations, absolutely.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And then online, indirectly, they've engaged over eight million people just over this period of two years. We've also been surveying them frequently throughout the program. And the surveys really show a clear, demonstrated increase in the frequency of outreach and the feeling of community that they have with each other in feeling like they're leading others in outreach, which is a critical aspect of this program-- to ensure that they are not just performing outreach themselves, but then each of them is impacting more and more others in their field.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And they also feel more institutional support through the program than they did before, which is very exciting, because we know that oftentimes in the sciences, there isn't a lot of support for outreach work institutionally. There's a lot of value to our membership in this program. We definitely built this program to try and incentivize them to be engaged. They come out to Washington, DC for a full two-day training, all expenses paid by AGU.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And this allows them to have this real connection with the other scientists who are part of the program and gives them that solid core foundation that they need to do the outreach work. We also provide what we call tenure letters to their institutions. We send letters at the beginning of the program letting their institutions know that they are part of this program and that AGU fully supports them and that we think this is incredibly important for them to do for the scientific community at large.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We want to show the institutions that this is something they should be doing and that it's a critical, valued aspect of their work as scientists. We host monthly phone calls with small groups of the scientists so that every single month you're checking in, you're being held accountable for the work that you're doing, and you have resources and information from AGU and from your fellow scientists to help you keep going throughout the year.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We promote their accomplishments as much as we can. We put them in our publications that we put out to our membership to show off what great work they're doing. We publicize their work online, through social media and other means. We provide them free registration to our big annual meeting every year. And we provide them with opportunities to apply for micro grants throughout the year.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: So these might be small events that they want to host at their local institution. They can apply for grants between $100 and $1,000 to put on a science policy talk at their institution, and maybe offer lunch for people to come out. So it's a great way to give them the resources to do a little more than they might be able to do on their own. They really become part of an exclusive network and community as part of this program, which makes them feel like they're VIPs.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It makes them really appreciate the program-- and also get to know other scientists who are focused on outreach, advocacy, and make them feel like they're part of that community, and encourages them to keep working. The institutions have really been thrilled and impressed. We've seen a number of them produce publications or post something on their website about the fact that their scientist was part of this program.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: They're really excited about it, which is great to be able to build that reputation. And we found that our participants are just incredibly grateful. One thing we didn't expect was, the very first time that we hosted this program, they started the morning saying a huge thank you to us at AGU for creating this program. So that's been really wonderful.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: The program's also been great for AGU's reputation. We're providing hope, confidence, and inspiration to our membership. They're seeing this as something wonderful that AGU is doing in addition to the other programs that we have available to them. And we're creating new advocates who engage others and speak well of AGU. When we've been able to give them so much as part of this program, they want to speak well of us to others.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And other societies are definitely taking notice. I've been asked to give a number of presentations on the topic, and we have a number of other societies who are starting similar programs. From the membership, we're hearing a lot about how this really makes them feel empowered. I wouldn't have been able to do this if not for being part of this program. I wouldn't have tried to apply for this additional position, or something like that.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And they've become great advocates both for our sciences and for AGU. I just want to end on a quote from one of our Voices for Science advocates from the program. She stated, "the fact that AGU created this program has stressed the importance of what communicating science as well as teaching and doing science-- provides for me just a little bit of legitimacy that mid-career professionals like myself never had when we expressed our interests in doing outreach at the university.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We can now not just say I do this because I think it's important, we say, AGU has prioritized this kind of work, and we are going to change science in this generation." And I hope that this is inspiring to some of those who may be considering a similar program at their association. I think it's been just incredible the amount of support and appreciation that we've gotten for this program so far.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And I think it's incredible value to our membership. So I'm looking forward to talking about how we have been pivoting, both with this program changing to a virtual launch rather than an in-person launch coming up next week, and more about what we're doing in terms of advocacy. Great. Thank you all.
Segment:5 Q&As.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you so much, Susan. We do have a question from the audience that I [INAUDIBLE] "What should societies or advocates consider when navigating advocacy work now, if it's not related to the current crisis?" We can start with Elizabeth. What do you have to say on that?
ELIZABETH LANDAU: [INAUDIBLE] I think this is a great question, and something that we have absolutely been dealing with-- as, I'm sure, other societies have, as well. And we've been talking with a few other organizations about, what are we doing now? How are we pivoting? We obviously have to change things that we had planned. And we have-- we really feel that right now, we need a connection with others and we need to communicate more than ever.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: It's really critical to assess how you are communicating with other groups, with your members. And we're all figuring out what that looks like in this moment. We have to understand that it's not going to be perfect from the very beginning, but we are working. And together, over time, we will improve on how we're able to respond. We're trying to figure out, what is appropriate for us to share now?
ELIZABETH LANDAU: We're looking at all of the plans we had coming up. For example, we have an election website trying to get our members to engage in the election. And our plan was, this month, that we want to encourage our members to volunteer for a campaign. But now we're saying, volunteer to phone bank from your home, or volunteer to get people to sign up to vote from your home. We've had to pivot and figure out what it is that we can ask our members to do as part of this new normal.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: But I think the critical thing is to make sure that you are not being tone deaf to the situation, but that we do understand and keep up advocacy, because it's so critical in this time-- I think more than ever.
CINDY SPARROW: --from you?
SUSAN DENTZER: I would agree. I think Liz nailed it. Be sensitive that unless you can somehow tie your advocacy, at the moment, to this terrible crisis, probably time to take a little bit of a step back. But probably not for long. We know that the news cycle changes really quickly. And look at China-- essentially, they had a two-month completely horrific experience, and then have put a lot of that behind them-- not entirely, and not in all aspects of that enormous country.
SUSAN DENTZER: But the wheel will turn, and there will be time to get your message out.
CINDY SPARROW: Over to you for a response.
SETH DENBO: I absolutely agree that maybe this is a time-- it depends on what you're working on and what your-- what the timeliness of the advocacy work you're doing is. But I also think-- this affects us all and affects all of our members in different kinds of ways. And it depends what you're defining as advocacy. We recently signed on to a statement put out by a bunch of different large associations-- I think it was actually initiated by the American Sociological Association-- advocating for our members in terms of professional issues-- asking their universities to consider lengthening things like tenure clocks so that people have-- so that, given that this is an interruption in their work, in the way we all work, that institutions need to account for that when thinking about things like how they evaluate and promote their employees.
SETH DENBO: So we were advocating for our members in a specific way related to the crisis. So I think it's worth thinking about the ways in which this affects us all and who you're advocating for and what your advocacy work is. And I think reengaging with your members, as Liz said, is really vital-- understanding how this crisis is affecting them. And that will involve certain kinds of advocacy.
SETH DENBO:
CINDY SPARROW: Another question from the audience. With the AGU's focus on sustainability, climate change, and health equity [INAUDIBLE] will be very relevant [INAUDIBLE]
ELIZABETH LANDAU: Sorry, you're cutting out a little bit. Would you mind repeating that, please?
CINDY SPARROW: So the question is with the AGU's focus on sustainability, climate change, and health equity, do you think that the effects of having humans across the world stop moving will be very relevant and a focus for researchers?
ELIZABETH LANDAU: Yeah, absolutely. I've already seen some preliminary thoughts on what might happen in terms of climate change impacts from what's been happening because of COVID-19 and the fact that people aren't, say, going out, driving their cars, purchasing things, production stopping. A lot of things that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions have paused. The very early predictions that I have seen think that there may be a dip which will just bounce right back to where we were beforehand.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: But I know that there will be many scientists who are interested in looking at what those effects are over the short term, while people are in quarantine, and also longer term. Perhaps there are some shifts that we're going to make longer term, like having more people telecommute more frequently than we used to before, do more remote work. So it'll be interesting to see, long term, what we wind up seeing.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: I think a lot of scientists are going to want to research that.
CINDY SPARROW: Turn it over to the other panelists.
SUSAN DENTZER: Nothing to add there.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you. I do have a question [INAUDIBLE] specifically for Susan. Do you see an overall increase in science funding happening after this crisis? We're seeing governments around the world [INAUDIBLE] more long-term investments, such as in France. Do you have anything to say about that?
SUSAN DENTZER: Yes. I think it's-- well, to speak for the United States, of course, when I first moved to Washington many years ago, a very smart person told me, never trust anybody who tells you what Congress will do, because that person will surely lie to you about other things, as well. And of course, it is very difficult, at this point, to predict the future of federal policy in just about any regard. That said, I think we've already seen enactment of legislation that has boosted funding, in particular, for NIAID, Tony Fauci's Institute for vaccine development, other aspects of its very important work.
SUSAN DENTZER: I think we're going to see some restoration of funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose budget has pretty much been decimated over the last 10 years, in particular. So I think the answer is yes, that there will be more money being-- in the future going to these very important priorities. On the other hand, as we know, we have extraordinarily large federal budget deficits, which we are going to enlargen even more with this fiscal response.
SUSAN DENTZER: I think that's important at this time. But what that means when the dust has settled and we're staring at these extremely large federal budget deficits-- you could see some voices saying, no, it's time to batten down the hatches and not necessarily expand federal research at NIH or elsewhere. I hope that doesn't happen, but you wouldn't want to rule that out.
SUSAN DENTZER: So I think it's another tip off that this will be a very important time for advocates for science and for biomedical research, in particular, to be at the ready to make the argument that we need to make some much greater investments in our-- not just in our biomedical research capacity, but in particular, our public health response capacity. And if we haven't seen a more important lesson of why we should doing-- do that than the COVID-19 pandemic, I don't know what else we could dream up to drive those points home.
SUSAN DENTZER:
CINDY SPARROW: [INAUDIBLE] can you still hear me?
SUSAN DENTZER: Yeah.
CINDY SPARROW: One more question from the audience. We probably have time for this last one. For our panelists, do any of your organizations have programs particularly focused on school-age children that inform, educate, and involve directly in things like hospital [INAUDIBLE] historical context relative to current and other issues and healthy communities, perhaps related to climate change?
SUSAN DENTZER: That's a good question. I'm, frankly, not that familiar with programs aimed at school-aged children generally except insofar as I would say that, if we're talking about secondary school children, there's a lot of very accessible material being created on health policy in particular, now, by the Kaiser Family Foundation. So I would say, again, assuming you've got a bright crop of secondary school students, I would point them to KFF.org, Kaiser Family Foundation dot org, for some really good material on health policy, in particular.
SUSAN DENTZER: And I'm sure there are analogous, really well-written, well-crafted, publicly available websites in some of these other areas, as well. I'll turn it over to Liz and Seth to comment on that.
SETH DENBO: We don't have any specific programs like that. What we have been doing is encouraging, over time-- over a long period of time, better links across between university-level history education and K through 12 education, to the point where we're even referring to-- many of us are referring to it as K through 16 education, that it's a long-term historical curriculum. And that's not just during history, but-- And I think the ways in which history is taught these days is very-- has changed a lot from the very facts and dates and long term and presidents and kings and queens and battles to a much more history that is focused on its relevance to particular communities, how those communities have changed, and much more local concerns about how your-- how history has evolved in your community.
SETH DENBO: So part of that would be involved in these kinds of-- the importance of historical context for understanding the way your community is and the way your community has evolved.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: --the AGU, we don't have a program that focuses particularly for-- on K through 12 with this type of work. We do have a geo health section at AGU which is relatively new which is focusing on the intersection of environmental health, climate change, all of that. And so I think they likely have some resources that might be useful within that section. And we also have-- as was mentioned in one of the earlier presentations today, AGU has a Thriving Earth Exchange program where we work to connect scientists and communities and solve local solutions-based problems with those communities.
ELIZABETH LANDAU: And so I think a lot of the work that gets done there involves communities of all ages. So I think we have a few things that are tangential, but nothing directed towards K through 12.
CINDY SPARROW: And thank you to our panelists for joining us this morning and sharing all your insight and best practices with us. And I think [INAUDIBLE] recording will be available of this session afterwards for attendees who want to replay or get more information. And [INAUDIBLE] Susan, Seth, and Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And that takes us to the end of our session.
CINDY SPARROW: Thank you.
SUSAN DENTZER: Thank you.
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