NAMI Smarts for Advocacy
Never thought of yourself as an advocate? Want to make a positive change in mental health services?
Grassroots advocacy is simple; you don’t have to know about policies or politics. It’s about using your voice to influence policy makers and make a difference. Turn your passion and your lived experience into a positive voice for mental health with the NAMI Smarts for Advocacy grassroots advocacy training.
Make Your Voice Heard
NAMI Smarts for Advocacy will enhance your advocacy skills and help you shape a powerful and personal story that will move policy makers.
The NAMI Smarts Difference
NAMI Smarts for Advocacy engages you in hands-on learning to build and strengthen skills. Whether you are new to advocacy or have years of experience, you will leave the training with messages, step-by-step tools, and the practice you need to feel informed, confident, and ready to make a difference.
NAMI Smarts Modules
NAMI Smarts for Advocacy may be taught as individual workshops or in combinations, including a single workshop that covers all four “core” modules.
NAMI Smarts – Core Modules
Telling Your Story is the main module of NAMI Smarts for Advocacy and should be offered to advocates before Contacting Your Policymaker, Meeting Your Policymaker and Policymaking 101.
Policymaking 101 is designed to follow Telling Your Story, educating participants about how a bill becomes a law – and where their story and advocacy can make an impact. It can be taught as a separate workshop after participants take Telling Your Story or immediately following another core module in the same workshop.
Contacting Your Policymaker is designed to follow Telling Your Story, helping participants take their full story and break it down for increasingly shorter means of advocacy. It can be taught as a separate workshop after participants take Telling Your Story or immediately following another core module in the same workshop.
Meeting Your Policymaker is designed to follow Telling Your Story, helping participants take their full story and share it in the context of a meeting with their policymaker. It can be taught as a separate workshop after participants take Telling Your Story or immediately following another core module in the same workshop.
NAMI Smarts – Issue-Specific Modules
Budgets: Funding Our Future is designed to help states advocate to protect or increase budget funding for mental health services and supports. It is built using the main components of Telling Your Story and can be offered as a standalone workshop to participants without joining a previous NAMI Smarts workshop.
Reimagining Crisis Response is a hybrid module designed to teach participants about crisis response and how to leverage their lived experience with crisis care to impact policymakers.
Medication: Protecting Choice is designed to help states advance their advocacy around medication access, typically with Pharmacy & Therapeutic Committees. It includes the main principles from Telling Your Story and can be taught to advocates without joining a previous NAMI Smarts workshop.
Parity: Fairness in Health Coverage
Parity: Fairness in Health Coverage is designed to help states advance their advocacy around mental health and substance use parity. The practice activity in this module is different from others, focused on filling out and submitting parity complaints. Note: offering this module is recommended primarily for when NAMI State Organizations are actively working on parity as an urgent policy priority.
NAMI Smarts – Additional Modules
NAMI Smarts: Advocacy Day combines learning from Telling Your Story and Meeting Your Policymaker for participants before a state Advocacy Day at the state capitol.
Want to get involved? Want to make your voice heard? Contact us at advocacy@namimd.org and join a training!
