Advocacy

The IUSM Department of Emergency Medicine Advocacy Project (EMAP) began in 2006 to improve EM residents' ability to interact with patients and the health care system beyond the bedside. IUEM faculty and residents have developed community, hospital, and legislative partnerships with the goal of bridging patient and physician within the nexus of healthcare that is the Emergency Department.  EMAP began with community based advocacy and education partnerships, including the wildly successful annual IUEM Bike Safety Fair and The Doctor Is IN student mentoring project.  With a tiered approach, hospital systems programming and action plan were put into place, including a patient and family centered care initiative, ED brief intervention in tobacco cessation, and collaboration with the IU-wide SBiRT program.  In addition, residents and faculty are now active in education and outreach in health policy and the legislative processes that affect emergency medicine as a specialty and our often vulnernable patients subject to multi-faceted health disparities.  The Scholars in Advocacy Track began in 2009 for residents interested in becoming leaders in community, systems, and legislative advocacy.

Objectives:

• Appreciate the importance of many societal factors that influence health, disease, disability, and access to care.
• Enhance advocacy skills by community, hospital system, and leglslative partnership projects
• Embrace advocacy as a core professional value for emergency physicians
• Achieve system and policy social change at the local, state, and national level

Residents from all stages of training are involved with advocacy activities as well as the IU EMSIG.  Advocacy is an important skill set to cultivate during medical education because it gives physicians an avenue to impact the continuum of medical care before a patient is seen in the emergency department and the vision to look for ways to impact health care through patient encounters.

"[This program] has taught me that even small interventions can pay huge dividends."

- An EMAP Volunteer

For more information, or if you are interested in partnering with the Indiana University Emergency Medicine Advocacy Project, please contact:

Jennifer Walthall, MD

Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine

Indiana University School of Medicine

jdhewlet@iupui.edu