While facts and figures are important when you are talking with policy makers, nothing is more powerful than a personal story. Real life stories help representatives know how their actions directly impact their constituents.
How Can You Get Personal?
Daily Life
Explain what your daily life is like living with diabetes. You may not have a lot of time, so you have to pick and choose what your share, but give a summary of some of the activities that you must do on a daily basis. Prepare this story before you head into the meeting. Time yourself and try to keep it as short as possible, but do not leave out important details. Explain how frequently you need to test your blood sugar, how many times you need to take insulin, why accuracy matters in those activities and if you have one, how a CGM works in your life.
How Legislation Affects Your Life
After describing what you have to do everyday to manage your diabetes, explain how current bills can help you manage even better. For example, if you are on Medicare, explain why the Medicare CGM Access Act is important to get passed. Your personal story of why a CGM would lead to better health for you will have a better chance of resonating with your representative. Your story about how a CGM could potentially save your life, but not having access to it because you are on Medicare, puts a face to the bill as opposed to just dollar and cents.
Thank Them
If your elected official has sponsored or co-sponsored any key legislation that is diabetes related, then thank them for doing so. In fact, thank them as soon as the meeting starts, in the middle and when you leave the meeting. Showing your thanks and appreciation goes a long way ith elected officials. Remember, they are hearing a lot of complaints every day.
Don’t Forget the Ask
Sharing your personal story and relating it to diabetes related legislation will take up almost all of your time for your meeting. You can’t forget the reason you are there, the ask. After your personal story was shared, your ask is now not just for a statistic about diabetes, it is for a specific individual that lives within their district.
Now that you have a few tips on how to share your personal story with your locally elected officials, it is time to schedule time to meet with them. First, you can use our Elected Officials Lookup Tool in order to find the names of all your representatives. Once you have that information, you can go directly to each of their websites to figure out how to schedule an appointment.Please keep in mind, that you may not meet directly with your representative, but there are plenty of other very important people in the office.