The APA assignment has two parts – the development of a “talking points” document and a letter to your legislator( from Alabama).
This assignment is a practice project for writing talking points and legislative letter that you would send to a legislator. It is your choice as to whether you actually send your work to a legislator, in which you would remove the title page, header, and page numbers.
Find legislative bills at Thomas.loc.gov (named after Thomas Jefferson and LOC stands for Library of Congress). Search under 112th Congress (no earlier sessions).
Note that you cannot ask a Legislator who votes in your state capital, to vote on legislation that is before the Congress.
You can see an example of talking points by going to:
ALA | Talking Points
Nursingworld.com
American Nurses Association
MO SNA – Controlled Substances
Vaccine Talking Points – Keep Kids Healthy
Talking Points for writing to elected officials.
Your talking points should be written as follows:
- House of Representatives (HR) or Senate (S) bill name and number as title
- at least 5 but no more than 8 bulleted items with a different reference for each talking point
- should include at least 2 bullets (one each) on national and state or regional statistics concerning the number of patients/nurses that the issue affects.
- at least one bullet or point about the impact of the problem as it relates to monetary cost, or days lost in work, or pain and suffering for those affected.
At least one bullet on the estimated impact of the bill or an alternative solution to the problem if you are opposed to the bill.
- no more that one page
- “zero in” on the concern or problem addressed in the bill
- point out why your particular legislator should sponsor the bill to help his/her own constituents.
- Reference page that includes cites where you obtained the information you cited in your talking points.