WSW Uses Fly-In to Help Build Cosponsor Wave for Key Legislation

WSW represents a large national professional association of medical specialists. Five months after the association’s priority legislation was introduced, the bill had attracted modest cosponsorship, but had not yet achieved the kind of momentum that gets legislation on the agenda for the committees of jurisdiction. The association had the essential ingredients: a common-sense fix to a longstanding issue with Medicare reimbursement, and members of the profession in nearly every congressional district who deal with the issue every day on behalf of their patients. What the association needed was a coordinated effort to deliver a unified message to Congressional offices.

WSW answered with a one-day national Fly-In, built using details from our comprehensive engagement matrix, which scores every House office by committee jurisdiction, district connection to practicing members of this specialty, prior support for the bill’s predecessor, and engagement history. More than 200 medical specialists from 43 states and Puerto Rico participated. WSW organized the attendees into teams and armed them with district-specific talking points and leave-behinds, and scheduled meetings with 126 House offices – nearly a third of the chamber – spanning 73 Republican offices and 53 Democratic offices and including 26 members of the Energy & Commerce or Ways & Means Committees, which shared jurisdiction for the legislation. And 87 of the 126 meetings included at least one specialist from the district, putting a constituent in the room rather than just an advocate. Every conversation was logged the same day into our engagement tracker with a named staff contact, and the WSW team managed a follow-up pipeline of thank-yous, requested materials, and ongoing engagement that continued for months after the advocates went home.

The results arrived quickly and kept coming. Within 30 days, several members who met with ADA’s delegation had signed on as cosponsors; within 90 days, a bipartisan wave of interest grew the bill’s cosponsor list by more than 70 percent. Nearly a third of the bill’s cosponsors can be traced back to an office the association’s advocates met during the Fly-In. The campaign demonstrated what a precision-targeted fly-in can do: when the right constituents deliver the right message to the right offices on a single day, and every conversation is captured and worked to conclusion, Hill meetings become more than photo opportunities – they become legislative momentum.