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>> The big deal in South Dakota was passing licensure
for all levels of speech- language pathology service
providers all the way from assistants
to you know independent practicing certified speech
language pathologists.
So up until that point there was regulation
for speech pathologists who were working in an education setting,
and they were of course regulated
by education administrators.
But through advocacy efforts and passage of the licensure bill
in South Dakota, we now have speech pathologists
who are regulating the practice of speech-language pathology
in South Dakota, and so for us that was a huge victory.
I think it's very rewarding I mean, you know, it's difficult
to be kept in a box for me, and also, you know,
as a speech-language pathologist,
communication is extremely important.
I enjoy being able to talk to other people and to visit
with them and to inform them about what I
and what other speech- language pathologists do,
so certainly it has been very rewarding.
It takes some time definitely you know
above the clinical service provision that we need to do,
but by making contacts with legislators
and special education directors
and health care providers in South Dakota.
I've certainly broaden my horizons.
I've been very well or - I've been educated a lot
about the concerns that other stakeholders in healthcare
and education have in terms of being able to provide services
in a state like South Dakota.
There are so many resources available on the ASHA website,
and if you type in ASHA advocacy and Google it, you're going
to get all of those resources that are available.
And I think one thing that helped me to kind
of realize the importance of advocacy
and understand the issues that are going on not only locally,
but at a national level was to subscribe to things
like Action Alerts, so that you can see what's happening,
you know especially in federal legislation.
And that's one of those tools that became extremely helpful
to me because it made it so easy for me to make an e-mail contact
with my legislator you know just using the template
that was there, personalizing a little bit.
You enter in a zip code and you're given all
of the contact information for your legislators,
both on a state and a national level.
And you can personalize a templated letter and send it off
to your legislators within a matter of a few minutes.
And so I think that's one really easy way
to get started with advocacy.
And I would definitely recommend contacting ASHA first before you
go out and think you have to start trying
to reinvent the wheel.
Because so many of the things that are of concern
to me personally where I live have been addressed
in other states and ASHA has been involved in that
and is aware of what worked and what didn't work.