Video 4: Social Science
Advocacy & Civic Engagement
Question: What do you see the need for advocacy in the future?

Speaker: David Hale, JD
Adjunct Assistant Professor, UMUC
Vice President for External Relations, Planned Parenthood

Students have the biggest opportunity to support themselves in becoming advocates by studying behavioral science, which is one reason I teach in the behavioral science department. I think it is the best way to understand our role in our society and the opportunities that we have to impact our culture. But honestly, I think students can make themselves advocates on whatever cause speaks to them. We live in a time when advocacy is necessary. There are groups of folks out there who’ve organized themselves on each side of almost every issue you can imagine, and we’re at a point in our political history when we hear a lot of divisive comments—it seems very bipartisan out there. And in reality what we’ve learned is that most people are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Most people aren’t at the far left or right of these extremes on the social issues. Unfortunately, the people on those extremes are speaking very loudly with a lot of money and a lot of organized power. So what that means is that the people in the middle have to also organize and they have to also make their voice heard on these issues. You can see this play out right now I think most easily in the health care debate. In this country, we have a lot of folks who believe that everyone should have the right to access affordable quality health care, and then you have other folks who do not believe that that is a social justice right. And that is an issue that's going to be decided in our lifetimes; it’s being decided right now by our current president. So if you are not active in that discussion, you’re going to be missing out on something that’s going to impact you and your children and your children’s children.

Speaker: Jean Accius, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor, UMUC
Director, Health & LTSS, AARP Office of Policy Integration

It is extremely important. It’s important because it’s the core of who we are as an organization. We are in the environment, the arena, of trying to advocate on behalf of the 50-plus population to ensure that they have adequate affordable health care, to ensure that they have economic security as they age, to ensure that they have the ability to live in a community that is age-friendly. That is why we advocate—and every morning that is part of our mission. Our founder went looking for her friend, and found her friend in a chicken coop. And that is not the society that we want for our parents; that is not the society that our founder wanted for herself nor did she want for her friends. So our founder said we need an organization that is going to speak on behalf of the 50-plus population that’s going to ensure that as we age, that we still have affordable health care, that we still have economic security, that we still have affordable housing, that we still have consumer protections. Someone needs to advocate on behalf of those individuals who are vulnerable, who are not vulnerable but need to ensure that there’s appropriate resources and that the policies are in place to ensure that they live a dignified life.

There’s a lot of transformation with our health care system. The Affordable Care Act—there are a number of tools within the Affordable Care Act designed to help individuals improve their health, improve their care, and also figure out how we try to rein in overall health care costs. I think that an area that we need to think about as our health care system continues to evolve: How are we being responsive to the people who are utilizing the health care delivery system? How do we ensure that people are receiving quality care regardless of where they live? Where you live has important implications on your health. So how do we ensure that there’s less variation in terms of hospital prices and services for the same procedure across this country. How do we ensure that people are participating in their own health care decision-making process? So I do think that there is a great deal of work around the health care industry, the health care arena. I also think that as a country, we’re facing some challenging times economically, both at the federal level with the rising deficits, and also clearly across the country in terms of states. So there are opportunities to think about how can we continue to evolve as a country, how can we continue to evolve as individuals and as communities in a way that preserves our values and what we believe in in terms of the social contract. And at the same time, address these issues in terms of our rising deficits and how to make very tough decisions.

Who best to do it but our emerging leaders, our thinkers, those individuals who are thinking outside the box. And I think that’s extremely important; it’s great to have the lens of gerontology, it’s great to have the lens of social science, but we also need the lens of engineers, we also need the lens of our business colleagues, we also need the lens of our biomedical colleagues to kind of think about how do we do this collectively so we can continue to evolve and expand our longevity and to ensure that everyone—everyone, regardless of where they live, have adequate care and have a wonderful quality of life.