Amputee Advocacy

For the past three days I have been participating in the Amputee Coalition's Advocacy Forum Days. Normally they would have been spent in Washington, DC, with today being spent visiting our Representatives and Senators. Because of COVID-19, this year's Forum was done online. Thank you to the coalition for assembling a great group of speakers and for mastering the technology to permit for a quality program. Today, instead of visiting our elected officials in person, we did it electronically through a semi-personalized email. It is the first time I have ever used this particular mechanism and within.a few hours, I received responses from two congressional offices.

In addition to being taught Advocacy 101, we also received a variety of information that will make it much easier to talk about amputees, how many of us are there, what is our age distribution, what caused most of us to have an amputation, etc. Thank you to all of the panel members and to the staff of the Coalition. This technology will take us far even when we are able to interact "normally." It's potential to better serving those who are always homebound, not to mention those in rural areas is unlimited. Perhaps this is one positive that will come out of the current pandemic.