American Medical Student Association

Grassroots Leadership

Welcome to AMSA's Grassroots Leadership team. This team consists of leadership representing the following areas surrounding Grassroots Leadership:

• Culture of Medicine
• Student Life
• Community and Environmental Health
• Global
• Gender and Sexuality
• Race, Ethnicity and Culture in Health
• Humanistic Medicine

Get Involved

• Apply now to be a Regional Coordinator for 2010-2011 
  Join us at convention for Q&A about the position. Deadline: midnight PST March 29, 2010. Not sure you'll have enough time at convention to get your questions answered? Register now for a Q&A webinar from 3PM-4PM EST, Saturday, March 20, or 7PM-8PM EST, Friday, March 26.

• Activism Toolbox: Your Guide to Grassroots Action
  Here you will find comprehensive resources for organizing and executing a strategic campaign. These documents provide step-by-step guides to organizing around an issue, creating influential and effective lobbying materials, and getting the message out to those who will effect change. Below you will find the tactics you will need, whether you are targeting the media, Congress, state legislators, or even fellow medical students.

Additional Resources

AIDS Activism

• AMSA AIDS Advocacy Network
• Globaltreatmentaccess.org
• Health Global Access Project (GAP)
• ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) Philadelphia

Access to Essential Medicine

• Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM)
  UAEM works with student and faculty groups across the US, Europe and Canada to coordinate efforts to improve the research, licensing and patenting decisions of universities. They assemble teams of experts in matters of intellectual property, technology transfer, pharmaceutical R&D, and healthcare delivery in resource-poor settings, in order to construct creative new approaches to improving the development and delivery of public health goods. If your school doesn't have a UAEM committee, learn how to form one and get your university on board!
   
• Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
  Introduces students to the technicalities of TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and patent laws. Provides overview of campaign issues and resources.

Globalization

• International Forum on Globalization
• Public Citizen

Health and Safety at Militant Actions

• Action-Medical.net

Tobacco Companies

• Tobacco.org

Book List

General (especially good if you're feeling burnt out)
- Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky
- You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train by Howard Zinn

Our Government (and its role in controlling…just about everything)
- Deterring Development by Noam Chomsky
- Neoliberalism by Noam Chomsky

The Media
- Killing Hope by William Blum
- Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky

Globalization and The Big Guns (WTO, World Bank, IMF etc…)
- INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT-The World Trade Organization: Global Government For The New Millennium? by Debi Barker and Jerry Mander
- The Case Against the Global Economy-And a Turn Toward the Local Edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith