Advocacy Days
The days we show up in person
Twice a year this community goes to a capitol building and sits down with the people who decide what care Texans can reach. Anyone can come. Most who do have never done it before.
Most of this community’s advocacy happens by email, at agency meetings, and in quiet conversations. Twice a year, it happens face to face.
You do not need experience, a background in policy, or anything to say beyond what has happened to your own family. Most people who come have never done it before, and the meetings are short.
The two days
One in Austin, one in Washington
Austin Days
February 22–23, 2027 · Texas CapitolThe Coalition’s own day at the Texas Capitol, also called Austin Advocacy Days. Texans affected by inherited blood disorders meet their own state representatives and senators and ask for the things on our priorities list — access to treatment centers, to the full range of therapies, and to the pharmacies that can handle them.
Two days: preparation and briefing, then meetings in the building.
Organized by the Coalition with both member organizations. Formal sign-up required.Washington Days
March 3–5, 2027 · Washington, DCThe national bleeding disorders community’s federal advocacy event, run each March by the National Bleeding Disorders Foundation. Advocates from every state meet their members of Congress on the same few days.
Texas has a particular reason to be there right now: a Texas member of the US House is carrying a bleeding disorders bill.
Run nationally by NBDF. Registration and travel go through them and through your member organization.The timing
February is not an accident
The Texas Legislature meets for 140 days every other year. Austin Days lands about six weeks into that session — while bills can still be filed and amended.
That two-week gap between Austin Days and the filing deadline is the whole reason the day exists when it does. A conversation in late February can still become a bill. The same conversation in May cannot.
What it is like
Nobody walks in cold
Before any meetings happen, the Coalition briefs everyone together — what we are asking for this session, why it matters, and the few facts behind it. Everyone leaves that briefing asking for the same thing, in their own words.
You are given a folder with the information in it: the asks, the numbers, and material to leave behind with the office. There is nothing to memorize.
The ask is yours to make. Nobody goes in to do it for you, and that is the point — you are there because you live in that district and this is your family. There is no one the Coalition could send who would say it better.
You will be scheduled with the offices of the people who represent you, your own House and Senate districts. Meetings run ten or fifteen minutes, and most are with a staff member rather than the legislator. That is not a downgrade: health staff write the memos, track the bills and brief the member.
Coming
How to sign up
Austin Days has a formal sign-up, and it opens ahead of the event. Put Austin Days in your message and we will pass your name along so you hear when registration opens.
For Washington Days, registration and travel run through the National Bleeding Disorders Foundation and your own member organization — Lone Star Bleeding Disorders Foundation for South Texas, Texas Central Bleeding Disorders for North and Central Texas. Ask us if you are not sure which is yours.
Further out
- Washington Days: March 8–10, 2028
- Washington Days: February 28 – March 2, 2029
- Austin Days runs in Texas legislative session years, so the next after 2027 falls in 2029.
Before you go
Worth reading first
Not sure it is for you? Write and ask. There is no experience required and no minimum — most people there are there because of what happened to their own family.