“Our top priorities really revolve around ensuring that everybody, regardless of their income, regardless of their gender, regardless of their race, regardless of where in the country they live, has access to the very best care for them and their family. And then ensuring that nurses have all of the education and training and support that they need to provide that care,” Jaimie Vickery, ONS’s director of government affairs and advocacy, told Jaime Weimer, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BS, AOCNS®, manager of oncology nursing practice at ONS, during a discussion about what the role of ONS’s lobbyist entails and what listeners should know about ONS’s 2023 advocacy work along with what’s ahead for 2024.  You can earn free NCPD contact hours after listening to this episode and completing the evaluation linked below.   Music Credit: “Fireflies and Stardust” by Kevin MacLeod  Licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0  Earn 0.5 contact hours of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD), which may be applied to the professional practice or performance ILNA categories, by listening to the full recording and completing an evaluation at myoutcomes.ons.org by December 8, 2025. The planners and faculty for this episode have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose. ONS is accredited as a provider of NCPD by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.  Learning outcome: The learner will report an increase in knowledge related to advocacy in oncology.   Episode Notes  Complete this evaluation for free NCPD.  ONS Capitol Hill Days  49th Annual ONS Congress® in Washington, DC, April 24–28, 2024  Oncology Nursing Podcast episodes:  Episode 33: Why Nursing Advocacy Is Important  Episode 46: Nurses Are Crucial in Local Advocacy Efforts  Episode 69: Nurses Influence Health Policy at ONS’s Capitol Hill Days  Episode 229: How Advocacy Can Shape Your Nursing Career  ONS Voice articles:  Nursing Advocacy Creates Real Change in Health Policy  Get Involved in ONS’s Health Policy Advocacy  Updates From Capitol Hill  Nursing Community Coalition  Learn more about the Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act (PCHETA) and ask your senators to cosponsor the bill.  Find an ONS chapter near you.   To discuss the information in this episode with other oncology nurses, visit the ONS Communities.   To find resources for creating an ONS Podcast Club in your chapter or nursing community, visit the ONS Podcast Library.  To provide feedback or otherwise reach ONS about the podcast, email [email protected].   Highlights From Today’s Episode  “I wish there was a typical day for a government affairs person. A lot of it does depend on what is happening, obviously, with Congress. When Congress is in session, sometimes there are bills that are being worked on that I need to know about and know how they impact ONS and the work we do. So, it’s a lot of researching on legislative records. It’s a lot of meeting with people, both policymakers and other people and other organizations, to figure out: Is this a good bill? Is this a bad bill? What do we need to do about it? And then meeting with staffers to really educate them on the work that we’re doing, why this certain bill would be so important, why this certain bill would be so bad, and a lot of time working with coalition partners to strengthen numbers.” TS 2:34  “So, Congress did something very new, very different. They have not done this. People are calling it a ‘laddered CR [continuing resolution],’ so that means there’s two parts to it. There are some federal agencies for which the funding will expire on January 17. The rest of those agencies will expire on February 2. The programs that we care about, nurse education programs,