In the final moments of the 1999 Washington Legislative Session, after five years of effort, a child life jacket law was passed requiring children 12 years and under to wear life jackets in boats under 19 feet in length.
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center and a coalition of Washington State injury prevention, public health, and law enforcement professionals worked together to provide education and information about the need for legislation. What seemed like a simple, common sense measure at the outset, needed a major, prolonged educational campaign to obtain success.
The campaign benefited from the combination of several strengths over the course of five years. The campaign also had to meet several challenges to reach its goal. A look at both the strengths and challenges may provide some useful lessons for similar injury prevention education campaigns in the policy arena.
The Strengths
- Personal concern, experience, and commitment of legislative sponsors.
You need primary sponsors who are willing to talk in personal terms about the value of the legislation, able to make your legislative issue one of their primary bills, and willing to make political sacrifices to keep the bill alive. - Close working relationship with legislative sponsors and their staff.
It's invaluable to have legislative sponsors come to view you as partners. They can look to you for advice about concerns with the legislation, and for help in locating others to provide needed expertise. A good working relationship with legislators and their staff helps you connect directly with them when you need it and stay better informed throughout the session. - Advance planning with key supporting organizations.
Each year in advance of the legislative session, hold meetings with interested organizations. These meetings help to evaluate what information is needed, start everyone off with the same information, reinforce organizational commitment to the issue, and allow for work to be shared for the coming months. - Close monitoring and quick reaction to new developments.
Pay close attention on a daily basis to new developments and keep in touch with legislative sponsors and their staff. In a busy legislative session bills are changed and acted on very quickly, and supporters need to respond equally quickly to be effective. Never be complacent; be proactive in educating legislators, supporters, and community members, and push for continued movement. - Supporter(s) in place with insider view of developments.
It's very difficult to know how, when, and on whom to expend energy during the course of a legislative session. It's doubly difficult if your campaign is not able to be on-site in the legislature. Try to establish a relationship with on-site lobbyists from organizations that support your issue. They can help with who to talk to at the right time and who provide periodic advice and updates. - Organized statewide network of supporters.
Organize a list of interested persons or organizations. Communicate by identifying small steps that are not overwhelming, and contact your list every time there is a need for legislators or the community to be informed. E-mail and fax trees can make it easy to keep in touch with large numbers of people, but the personal touch of a phone call also helps to keep people engaged. - Multi-year campaign.
Having a similar bill introduced over several legislative sessions got most legislators used to the idea that this was an issue that would eventually be passed. A respect was developed, even among opponents, for the integrity and commitment of the people interested in the legislation. This helped make it easier to pass the bill in the long run.
The Challenges
- Working with interest groups with different viewpoints on the issue.
A major challenge for our campaign was how to work with large boat owners, who were concerned about restrictions on personal freedom in the water and believed that life jackets were not always necessary. Keep lines of communication open, and be respectful of opposing viewpoints. - Statistics that don't make an urgent case for legislation.
It's difficult to generate support for the urgency of a measure, when opponents can argue that hard data doesn't show it to be what they would consider a major problem. Focus on the preventability of boating related drowning deaths through the use of life vests. - Lack of families as spokespersons for the issue.
We were fortunate to have a father willing to talk about his daughter who drowned as a young adult in a boating incident. The impact might have been supplemented by the testimony of a parent of a child under 12 years of age that drowned or nearly drowned. The impact of a personal story cannot be overestimated. - Missing or weak grassroots involvement in legislation.
Our campaign primarily involved health care, injury prevention, and marine patrol professionals. Initially we did not put significant energy into informing grassroots citizens. Over time however, increased media exposure did help keep the public informed and involved. And in the final legislative session, groups like the state PTA became involved and helped spread awareness of the issue.
Other Lessons Learned
We also learned several other important lessons through the process. Among them:
- Not all "no" votes are the same. Sometimes legislators vote against your bill because they feel party pressure or do not like the current version of the legislation. Sometimes legislators may help move a bill even if they don't agree with it. It's important to know and understand when each is occurring.
- You need to compromise. You need to compromise. The ideal bill is difficult to craft, and more difficult to pass. Stay open to trying different approaches. Politics is the "art of the possible".
- Know where you're willing to compromise. Know where you're willing to compromise. Start with what you want, know where you are willing to compromise, establish your "bottom line", and then communicate clearly if something is better than nothing in a bill.
For More Information
For more information about Washington State's child life jacket legislation or the Washington State Drowning Prevention Network, please contact:
Elizabeth Bennett, MPH, CHES
Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center,
Seattle, Washington,
206-987-5718 or
elizabeth.bennett@seattlechildrens.org.
Written by Tim Bernthal and Elizabeth Bennett. July, 2000.