Advocacy
What is Advocacy?
- Giving a voice for those we serve who have no voice.
- Providing support to those who cannot help themselves.
- Sharing our powerful stories.
- Educating our policy makers, our schools, our communities.
- Expanding awareness of Dance/Movement Therapy as an essential therapeutic modality.
- Motivating and orchestrating lasting change.
Current ADTA Government Affairs Objectives:
- Dance/Movement Therapy added to H.R. 4063 The PROMISE Act / H.R. 271 The COVER Act as a listed complementary alternative treatment therapy for mental health issues for inclusion of treatment for veterans
- Broadening licensure obtainability for dance/movement therapists across the country
How can you help?
- Join ADTA Government Affairs Committee
- Serve on a regional chapter board
- Participate in Calls of Action
- Visit your congressional member
- Call your congressional member
- Write a letter to your congressional member
- Email your congressional member
- Encourage your co-workers, creative arts therapists, doctors, social workers, marriage family therapists, family members, friends, and neighbors to call, email, and/or write letters to their congressional members on the behalf of Dance/Movement Therapy
- Attend an event where your congressional member is speaking…ask a question regarding Dance/Movement Therapy
- Take a workshop focused on Advocacy
- Work with organizations to expand awareness and accessibility of Dance/Movement Therapy into the mainstream of healthcare, education, licensure, legislation, and communities
- Educate your doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, marriage family therapists, nurses on the value and effectiveness of Dance/Movement Therapy for their patients/clients
- Share Dance/Movement Therapy research, benefits, and impact with everyone you encounter. (Need materials? Use these clinical information sheets.)
50 Years / 50 Ways to Advocate for Dance/Movement Therapy
Learn more about what others have done.
Find Your Governmental Officials
House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/
Senate: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/
Resources:
- Americans for the Arts
http://www.americansforthearts.org
- National Coalition for the Creative Arts
- National Endowment for the Arts – Dance
https://www.arts.gov/artistic-fields/dance
- Arts in Health – Improving our Nation’s Health Through the Arts
http://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2015/events/arts-advocacy-day/
handbook/14.%20Arts%20in%20Health-final_EVF.pdf
- Arts, Health and Well-Being across the Military Continuum
http://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2013/by_program/
legislation_and_policy/art_and_military/ArtsHealthwellbeingWhitePaper.pdf
- National Initiative for Arts & Health in the Military
http://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2013/by_program/