As chair of the YPC in District 6, I
often hear the cry from the general public that NATA doesn’t do enough for our
profession. My reply always is, “Well, what do you want from them? What do you think they should be doing?” Half the time
this question is met with a glassy stare and a few vapid blinks. The other half of the time it’s something
along the lines of “they should be passing laws to make us have better
salaries and better work conditions!”
So let me start there. The NATA is not a
union and they are not there to regulate salary for us. I’m not sure I’d want
them to. I’m not sure if a blanket salary would be beneficial or feasible. An
athletic trainer working in Los Angeles certainly needs a bigger salary to meet
cost of living than one in rural Texas. NOR do we want the NATA mandating our
working conditions. What works in one high school may not work in one
college. With that being said, the NATA
is there to help give each athletic trainer the tools necessary for each of
these hypothetical ATs to get the best situation they can.
In 2013, only 494 NATA members
contributed to NATAPAC. That is less
that 1% of our professional organization.
This is a huge problem. For all
those that say NATA should be changing laws and demanding better working
conditions, I’m sorry to inform you, you have the wrong organization in mind. The NATAPAC is the one that can get the ball
rolling on those things.
The NATAPAC enables employees or members of groups, like the NATA, to
pool their resources and make political contributions to candidates that
support issues related to the group.
Monies have to be given to the PAC by individuals in the group, and
cannot be given by the group themselves.
Meaning NATA cannot give support to politicians who support third party
reimbursement for ATs (support = MONEY!), the individuals within the group
(US!) must do it. You know? All that
checks and balances stuff we learned about once upon a time…
The PAC
does the hard work for us. They find the politicians on both sides of the
political poles that support what athletic trainers do and what they are
capable of doing, and then work with those to formulate those laws that protect
athletic trainer’s wants and needs. A
small gift by you to the NATAPAC would help accomplished a lot of the goals
that our general public thinks that NATA should be doing for us. If nothing, the NATAPAC breakfast held every
year at the annual symposium is a great opportunity for networking,
socializing, and fundraising for the profession. I’ve attended for several years and it has
always been worth the early wake up time.
And while
contributions to the NATAPAC (or any other PAC for that matter!) are not tax
write-offs, contributions to the NATA Foundation are. So, in this tax season, if you are looking to
beef up your deductions, please consider the Foundation. The NATA Foundation works to give scholarships
and grants to researchers within the profession. One reason that ATs struggle to make footing
with our professional peers is that our research pool is fairly limited. Sure,
there is tons of research taking place in sports medicine, but it is not being
done by athletic trainers. That is a
very important distinction and certainly one that will help us create a better
image of the profession.
For more
information on both organizations, visit:
-Tiffany McGuffin
