Creating Social Change
Elements of a Model for Social Change: This model allows us to
identify which elements are already being fulfilled in our advocacy as
Medical Whistleblowers , and identify gaps on which to concentrate
resources.
The seven elements are -
1. Knowledge
2. Desire
3. Skills
4. Optimism
5. Facilitation
6. Stimulation
7. Reinforcement
1. Knowledge/awareness: The most obvious first step is that people
must:
 Know there is a problem;
 Know there is a practical, viable solution or alternative. This is
important. People are practical - they will always demand clear,
simple, feasible road maps before they start a journey to a
strange place.
 Identify the personal costs of inaction and the benefits of
action in concrete terms people can relate to (i.e. they 'own'
the problem).

An awareness campaign aims
to harness people's judgment.
2. Desire - imagining yourself
in a different future
Change involves imagination.
People need to be able to
visualize a different, desirable,
future for themselves.
This is different to being able to recognize rational benefits.
Desire is an emotion, not a kind of knowledge. Advertising agencies
understand this well - they stimulate raw emotions like lust, fear, envy
and greed in order to create desire. However, desire can also be
created by evoking a future life which is more satisfying, healthy,
attractive and safe. To design a campaign that harnesses our
stakeholder’s imaginations, we will have to start by liberating our own.
3. Skills - knowing what to do
Being able to easily visualize the steps required to reach the goal. This is
not about emotion - it is purely rational.
People learn skills best by seeing someone else do them. The best way
to do this is to break the actions down into simple steps and use
illustrations to make visualization easy. It's amazing how many
campaigns for social change forget this element.

We, as Medical Whistleblowers, need to have those who have gained
particular skills mentor others in what they have learned. Each of us
has a unique personal history complete with a set of transferable skills.
4. Optimism (or confidence)
The belief that success is
probable or inevitable. The
repeated losses of legal case
appeals in the lower courts and
also the Supreme Court, as
well as lack of consistent
support from the US
Legislature, concurrent with lack of enforcement by the DOJ of criminal
intimidation and civil rights violations, has left our Medical
Whistleblower disheartened. Often I send words of encouragement to
just let them know that somebody cares and to keep their spirits up.
True successes are few and far between, so we need to create our own
successes. Strong political or community leadership is probably an
important ingredient of optimism.
5. Facilitation - having outside support
Most people are busy with limited resources and few choices. They may
need accessible services, infrastructure and support networks that
overcome practical obstacles to carrying out the action. There are real
and significant obstacles facing our Medical Whistleblowers, such as
financial insecurity, employment blacklisting, emotional trauma and
alienation from their professional and personal comrades, loss of

support from their religious faith community, loss of support from
family and friends, and the need to retool in a totally different
professional field.
If personal behavior change is blocked by real-world obstacles, then all
the communications on earth will be ineffective. The role of an
education strategy might therefore need to be expanded to involve the
establishment of new
services and
infrastructure. I believe
that this is an area
where a small cash
grant would be
essential. For example,
money to provide
monthly webinar
services which would
allow a flexible schedule with real time personal contact with Medical
Whistleblowers from all over the USA and potentially the world. Also a
website interface (perhaps provided by a collaboration with another
NGO) could be helpful which would rapidly allow our Medical
Whistleblowers to express their views to the press, the State and
Federal Legislature and to administrative governing bodies. We also
need to empower our Medical Whistleblowers by giving them back
their own self esteem through creative opportunities in employment,
successful partnerships with law enforcement, and entrepreneurial
enterprises to increase financial security.

6. Stimulation - having a kick-start
When faced with retaliation we tend to pull back into areas where we
feel secure. So in the immediate throes of Medical Whistleblower
retaliation trauma we often withdraw rather than move forward to
assert ourselves. This is a natural
consequence of what we have
experienced and so in order to
truly use the human potential of
this talented group of people we
must overcome a level of inertia
and maybe even fear. There are
two ways to compel people to act,
either by threat (either personal or direct) or by inspiring them.
Medical Whistleblowers are already motivated by direct and personal
threats on their professional and personal lives, so this is a strong
motivating force for them. But we must also endeavor to raise the
inspiration consciousness of our Medical Whistleblowers. The
inspirational happens in a collective context - based on our human
social instincts. So the stimulation to compel our Medical
Whistleblowers to take action and get involved could be an imminent
threat (like the loss of a job, loss of their home, threat to their medical
license, concern for patient abuse), a special offer or competition, or,
better still, some communally inspirational shared event which
galvanizes action (e.g. a telethon, a rally, a public meeting, a festival).
7. Feedback and reinforcement
We are all bombarded with a host of voices, situations and institutions
daily wishing to compel us to act, we tend to ignore many of these

messages. So effectively advocating for social change is about
continuous recruitment and reinforcement of messages - with regular
communications which report back to people on the success of their
efforts and the next steps which are expected of them. Many NGOs
(ACLU, Amnesty International, Sierra Club, Public Citizen) have learnt
this lesson and devote considerable resources to continuously feeding
success stories and updates to their contributors, as well as new calls
for support and action. Thus we need a much more robust system to
report back to our Medical Whistleblower shareholders in a meaningful
and timely way.
The importance of empowerment
Empowerment is the feeling of confidence that you can be a cause of
genuine change. In practice,
it's an elusive mixture of
many ingredients - like skills,
optimism, leadership, belief
and experience.
Empowerment can be built in
a social advocacy campaign
by maintaining a close
association with the Medical
Whistleblowers and Patient Advocates and the other stakeholders in
the community. Listening carefully to their needs and responding to
their requests. It is also important to give them a sense of ownership
and ability to direct the efforts of the Medical Whistleblower
leadership.

However empowerment is surprisingly fragile. It can easily be
destroyed by dishonesty or mixed motives. We in the Medical
Whistleblower group have experienced this first hand with the
hostilities that erupted within the Semmelweis Society International
this year and the drawn out lawsuit for control of the SSI financial
assets, name, and website.
Karma
Not many advocates for social change suffer from hubris because they
know their task is tough and there are few unequivocal success stories
out there. That's because real social change is not made by advocates.
It's made by history.
Sustained social
change is made by our
natural responses to
the inspired
communication of our
social leaders, the will
of the people that
leads to great
historical events and
circumstances. It's impossible to fabricate the inspirational factor of a
Dalai Lama, a Mahatma Gandhi, a Martin Luther King, or a Desmond
Tutu.
Those who wish to create meaningful social change need to be alert to,
and go with the social flow. Engineers and managers, however, often

don't appreciate this. They expect that they can engineer change - but
the truth is they can only influence changes which are already
occurring. It is much easier to direct the flow of change than it is to get
the ball rolling. Educators therefore need to be alert, flexible and
opportunistic for ways to connect their campaign to social shifts and
movements as they occur.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my message is that we
need an education strategy for
Medical Whistleblower that actually
works, as opposed to one that looks
good on paper. This educational plan
is likely to involve a lot more than
just communication techniques. We
need look forward and to think of the
long term goals and ensure that
necessary resources are available to
repeat and reinforce our messages.
If we really want to affect social change in how Medical Whistleblowers
are treated and how their allegations of Medial Fraud, Patient Abuse
and Neglect and Human Rights Violations are addressed, we must do
more than awareness communication. We must determine what
concrete changes in policy and protocol are necessary, but also what
changes in attitudes and beliefs. We must help people visualize new
futures by creating for them the context in which that new destiny can
be framed. But we also need to be mindful of the bricks and mortar

necessary for that new construction of protocols and actions. We need
to work with partners from other disciples, those with different skills
than we have as medical professionals. We will need legislators to help
change laws. We will need health and human services managers and
administrators to help implement the laws. We will need law
enforcement officials
and officers to enforce
the laws. We will need
politicians and
diplomats to provide
leadership and build
bridges of
communication
between diverse
groups. We need more
than medical
professionals who have suffered Bad Faith Peer Review and want to
right the wrongs done to them in their own lives. I wish in this first
National Medical Whistleblower Conference to create a sense of a
special inspirational event, an event which will provide us with the
opportunity to have meaningful face to face discussion of our goals for
social change.
Sincerely, Janette
Dr. Janet Parker, DVM, Executive Director, Medical Whistleblower
P.O. Box C, Lawrence, KS 66044 MedicalWhistleblower@gmail.com