Urgent! Please register for Lobby Day!!

Dear SAZAPN/NPS Members an Followers,

Your nursing leaders have been hard at work doing everything possible to make this year legislative session historic for Arizona's APRNs. Here are a few of the updates.

Lobby Day:

This year all of Arizona's nursing organizations across the state have agreed to share one lobby day and focus all of our energies into getting our legislation passed.

Lobby Day is this coming Tuesday Jan 19th. We need to flood the capitol with nurses. To register go to http://www.aznurse.org/events/event_list.asp We are trying hard to get APRNs from every legislative district and to have face to face meeting with every legislator.

We have a particular need for APRNs or other supportive persons from District 2 - southern Tucson, to Nogales, it including Sahrita, Green Valley, Sonoita and Patagonia - and District  10 - South Eastern Arizona, including Safford Thatcher, Morence, Sierra Vista, Benson, Bisbee, and Duncan.

And we would love a few more from District 3 in Tucson!

If you live in these districts or know APRNs that live in these districts please urge them to register for lobby day. We can send along other APRNs to accompany a person from a district, but the legislators will not schedule appointments unless at least one of the visitors is from their district. If you or another APRN does not know what your legislative district is, you can look it up at the following website http://azredistricting.org/districtlocator/

Registration for lobby day closes tomorrow Thursday Jan 15th at 9pm. We have to close off registration in order to give the Nurses Association staff time to set up and coordinate all the meetings with the legislators.

Legislation Update:

Our draft legislation has been submitted to the legislature and we are hoping to have a bill number next week. Senator Nancy Barto has agreed to sponsor our bill and we are working with a number of legislators to secure co-sponsors.

Public Relations Update:

We have created a new Website that we can direct legislators and the public to in order to educate them on APRNs and our legislation. The site is active. We will be adding lots more material over the next few weeks. You can view the site at aprnaz.org

Our Social media Campaign is in full swing. Please be sure to follow the Coalition on Facebook and Twitter. We have already had Sen. Nancy Barto (District 15) and Rep. Steve Montenegro (District 13) like and share some of our posts.