Advocacy

& Pre-conference Prep

The intent of this landing page is to provide members quick access to key material to support pre-conference and related advocacy coming out of the conference.

CEO Jess Rogers providing an overview of this landing page for AFHTO members.

AGENDA
Pre-conference
Wednesday Oct. 22, 2025

Regatta Room (off the hotel lobby bar)

12:00 - 1:00 Registration and T-Shirt Pick Up

1:00 - 2:00 Lightening Round: Connecting on key issues and designing for next year (AFHTO)

2:00 - 5:00 Workshop to build our power to advocate.
Leading the Power of Primary Care: Public Narrative Story-Telling as Leadership Practice (Mike Perry)

5:00 - 5:30 Advocacy Tools, Plan and Pitch for PR Campaign (AFHTO and Santis Health)

5:30 Adjournment

*we will have some light snacks and refreshments served during the afternoon

WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
2 - 5pm

Leading the Power of Primary Care: Public Narrative Story-Telling as Leadership Practice

Description: Increasingly, advanced, responsive, and innovative leadership skills are needed to advance organizations' mandates and meet community interests. In recent years, scholars have studied narrative as leadership in many diverse disciplines. Professions engaged in narrative practice include the military, the clergy, law, politics, business, the arts, and now, through AFHTO, primary care.

As leaders in health care, we are often so busy and working to care for others that we "sleep walk" though our own stories of why we do what we do. 

Based on the work of Marshall Ganz at Harvard, participants in this workshop will:

  • learn and apply the public narrative framework to tell stories in specific ways - stories of self, us, and now - that inspire people to take action for shared purpose;

  • understand and apply the role of loss, values, empathy, and vulnerability and hope in leadership;

  • further develop their relational leadership skills through authentic, values based, purposeful communication;

  • see how to integrate storytelling into advocacy, communications, organizing strategy, and collective action; 

  • cultivate reflective leadership practice rooted in self-awareness, values, and the stories, values, and vulnerabilities of others; and

  • leave the session with a first draft of their own public narrative - story of self, us and know - to use in both advocacy and their FHTs.

This intensive workshop entails self-examination and the choice of sharing vulnerabilities and will enhance participants' abilities to speak with enhanced credibility, build professional relationships beyond the transactions of the moment, and use their stories to inspire change.