(Circulation. 1996;94:1802-1803.)
© 1996 American Heart Association, Inc.
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What Are You Waiting For?
Research! America, 1522 King St, 2nd Floor, Alexandria, VA 22314-2717.
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Introduction |
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"Do not wait for leaders, do it alone, person-to-person."—Mother Teresa
It is my experience that clinicians and scientists explain their reluctance to become personally involved in advocacy for medical research on the basis of one or more of the following rationalizations: "My efforts won't make any difference." "I don't know how." "I don't have time, and besides, it's not seemly to do so." Rarely do I hear that advocacy isn't necessary, least of all in these times of unprecedented threats to funding of the National Institutes of Health, but advocacy is usually regarded as somebody else's job. If indeed it were ever true that advocacy is the exclusive purview of only a few (Deans, Presidents, society leaders, voluntary health organizations), that system is not working any more! If we don't all become comfortable with the fact that advocacy is part of our jobs now, funding will drop, clinicians will have fewer new tools and strategies at their disposal, the public will feel shortchanged, and scientists won't have their own jobs anymore, much less the ability to assign advocacy for maintaining that job to someone else.
There are two ways to act as an advocate for research. The first is to do your own advocacy; the second, which will be effective only if you are comfortable doing the first, is to stimulate advocacy among members of the public. The first thing an advocate needs to know is that the public believes that medical research should be a higher national priority; in