Pharmaco-Political Kinetics: Why and How Your Involvement Makes the Profession Move

by Ashley Builta, Pharm.D.,MPA fellow of association management and business development

The idea for this series came to me within my first few weeks on rotation here at MPA. I was trying to figure out how to convey what the term “advocacy” means, how easy it is to practice advocacy and all the things that go on here at MPA that revolve around advocacy. Having recently graduated and passed my pharmacy boards, the term pharmacokinetics was still fresh in my mind. After a creative think-tank session and play on words, I decided to move forward with calling the series “Pharmaco-Politics: An Advocacy Regimen” and here’s why:

When you look at the definition of pharmacokinetics, it has to do with what the body does to the drug. An analogy along this line would then say that the “drug” is like a bill and the “body” is the Legislature and the legislative process.

Let’s walk through an example:

• Absorption: the drug is swallowed = the bill is introduced into the House/Senate.
• Distribution: the drug is absorbed in the stomach and released into the blood stream = the bill is assigned to Committee(s).
• Metabolism: the drug goes to the liver, where it is either changed into something useful or prepared to be eliminated from the body = the Committee(s) review the bill and make recommendations. Based on Committee recommendations, wording may be changed. This bill is then voted on in the House/Senate, and, if passed, goes to the opposite chamber to be voted on.
• Elimination: the drug is taken up in the tissues as something useful or eliminated from the body = the House and Senate pass the bill, and the bill makes its way to the governor’s desk, where it is signed. At this point, the bill is now “eliminated” from the legislative process by becoming a Public Act and is part of the Public Health Code. Or, if the bill doesn’t make it out of Committee to be voted on by the House/Senate, the bill dies in Committee and is scrapped at the end of the legislative session.

So, in my example above, the bill is the drug, the different Committees are the various organs of the body that metabolize drugs (in this case, the liver), and the elimination happens either when the bill dies in Committee or is signed by the governor into a Public Act.

The term kinetics really spoke to me because it moves. Advocacy isn’t typically a term that resonates with most people, but movement does. Advocacy is keeping a watchful eye on the legislative process and intervening at key points in the process. We keep a watchful eye on how a bill moves through the Michigan legislative process and try to help it along if it’s pharmacy-friendly or fix it if it’s not so friendly. We follow a bill (the drug in my analogy) through the various chambers of the House or Senate and the different Committees it ends up in (the body), the changes in wording that happen along the way (metabolism) and finally to its fate (elimination from the body). We report this information to MPA members, but that reporting is passive from most members’ perspectives. What really moves the profession is when pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, student pharmacists and other pharmacy professionals get involved in this advocacy process by intervening at critical times.

A lot of what we do with advocacy efforts (for example, in helping educate legislators on the affects of the bill or working with groups to help fix the wording contained in the bill) are akin to changing the delivery systems of drugs for better effect. We try to help speed up absorption through strategic meetings, while at the same time anticipating the harmful byproducts of metabolism of the bill in Committees. If a bill is introduced that is not friendly to pharmacy, but we can’t stop it from passing (think of a highly-toxic chemotherapy agent), we try to reduce the harmful side effects of the bill with our advocacy efforts (giving an anti-nausea medication).

The kinetics of pharmaco-politics is really all about using our pharmacy experts (you!) at critical times when an intervention is needed. But, then again, pharmaco-politics is also taking ideas that pharmacy professionals have (your ideas) and putting them into motion. This, to me, is the magic of MPA. There’s a whole team of people here who are able to listen to what members are saying and activate the advocacy efforts of staff and other members to make things move.

But MPA can only do so much; there are three people here working to represent the more than 15,000 pharmacists and student pharmacists, not to mention the many more pharmacy technicians, who practice here in Michigan. To really get things moving and capitalize on the kinetics, we need MANY members to be involved in the process, working together with a united purpose and message. That is the point of this series. If I could ask you one thing, it is to read this series so that you have a better understanding of the legislative process and advocacy efforts. Hopefully one day, you’ll remember a few of the lessons from this series and get the profession moving by participating in advocacy yourself!

Our next post entitled “The Kinetics of Pharmaco-Politics: Absorption – Effectively Communicating Your Message to Your Legislator”will be on how to effectively deliver your message to legislators. We hope to see you next time and look forward to any comments you have for us!