Advocacy to Promote and Protect Naturopathic Medicine
The WANP works tirelessly in Olympia to promote and protect the practice of Naturopathic Medicine by Naturopathic Physicians so that our members can maintain and increase their scope of practice, enjoy greater awareness of the naturopathic physician profession, and get full and fair reimbursement for our work.
WANP's Legislative Priorities
- Protect and advance the recognition, scope of practice, and legal status of naturopathic physicians licensed in Washington State to ensure alignment with naturopathic medical training and responsibilities as legally designated Primary Care Physicians.
- Improve reimbursement (up to and including working toward pay parity) for naturopathic physicians.
- Monitor bills and testify on legislative efforts that would impact the practice of naturopathic physicians.
Here’s how you can Take Action Today to support our efforts:
Help Support WANP's Legislative Efforts!
Why we need YOU to get politically active!
3 Simple Steps to Becoming a Political Ally
Everything you Need to Know About Scope Modernization
Helping you help us! Here is your Legislative Action Toolkit!
Learn more at our upcoming Advocacy events!
Why we need YOU to get politically active!
A core part of the mission of the WANP is to protect and expand naturopathic scope of practice to better meet the healthcare needs of our communities. As naturopathic training requirements, therapeutics, and complexity of illness advance with time, so must our scope! Naturopathic physicians have long played a prominent role in the primary care of their patients, and increasing numbers of naturopathic physicians are working in community health, tribal health, and rural clinics providing care to traditionally underserved populations. We believe that these doctors should be empowered to provide the full scope of primary care services their patients require (and that the state recognizes them to provide), and we are constantly working with our state legislature on their (and your!) behalf.
Any effective political effort requires extensive grassroots support, and that's where YOU come in! We need you to help us make sure that our legislators and other elected officials know who we are and why they should support our efforts! Politics is fundamentally about relationships. Just like you don't expect your patients to do what you recommend until you have established some rapport and trust, we cannot expect our elected officials to heed our calls if they don't even know who we are.
This page aims to help you learn how to be a wonderful political ally and advocate for naturopathic medicine. We are here to help! If you ever have questions or need additional information or support, let us know at info@wanp.org.
Support the WANP's Political Action Campaign (PAC) Fund
Our Political Action Campaign (PAC) funds help facilitate face to face meetings with our state's lawmakers. While campaign contributions are by no means required, they are the primary way our organization supports the legislators who work hard to support us. These funds can assist in opening doors for the WANP and they make our legislative work much easier. Our 2025 PAC fundraising goal is $15,000. Help us get there by making a contribution today!
3 Simple Steps to Becoming a Political Ally
- Learn what Legislative District(s) you live and work in.
Use the Washington State Legislature's District Finder to enter the physical addresses for your home and work. Memorize this information! (Or jot it down in a note somewhere.) - Learn who represents you in the Washington State Legislature.
After you enter your address, the District Finder will show you a map of your legislative district as well as your state senator and representatives. Each name is hyperlinked and you can click on each one to learn more about your local elected officials - including ways to contact them and their legislative assistants, a link to their home pages, and the committees they serve on in their respective chamber. You will also be able to identify if your local legislator is a member of their caucus leadership and what role they play. Feel free to click on the hyperlinks to explore and learn more about the lawmakers who represent YOU! - Contact your local legislator and introduce yourself!
Use any of the methods of contact you just found to reach out to your local lawmaker and introduce yourself! Take this opportunity (now! do it right now!) to send an e-mail or leave a voice mail simply introducing yourself as a constituent. Tell them you are a naturopathic physician (or a patient or ally of naturopathic medicine). If you are in practice, tell them a little about your practice and what types of patients you see. If you are a patient or ally, tell them what naturopathic medicine has done for you or a loved one. Establish yourself as a subject matter expert and provide them with a way to contact you (ideally, personal cell or e-mail address) should they have any questions at all about naturopathic medicine. (See below for some language suggestions if you need some extra help!)
[Pro tip: ALWAYS cc your legislator's legislative assistant (LA). Most likely, you will not hear back directly from your legislator, but rather from their LA. Be super nice and make friends with the LA as well as the legislator! You can find the full legislative roster, including LAs, HERE.]
That's it! You did it! You took the first steps in advancing naturopathic medicine in our state! Thank you for your efforts!
Everything you Need to Know About Scope Modernization
Why Support Naturopathic Scope Modernization?
The modernization of Naturopathic scope of practice enables naturopathic physicians to practice the comprehensive primary care they are trained and licensed to provide as legally designated primary care physicians in Washington State. Increasing numbers of naturopathic physicians are working or seeking work in community and tribal health systems, providing primary care to diverse and traditionally underserved populations. Naturopathic doctors truly shine in these settings with their focus on prevention, lifestyle intervention, and whole person care. However, patients who seek out naturopathic primary care often come in on many pharmaceutical medications - some of which are not currently in naturopathic scope of practice. This leads to patients suffering because they need to maintain care with secondary providers to manage prescriptions that are routinely managed in the primary care setting. This duplication of care creates undue burden on the patient and the system, increasing costs (both to patients and to insurers/Medicaid) and often delaying necessary care. In worst case scenarios, patients must be referred to already-stressed emergency departments for care that could be easily provided by a primary care physician. The COVID-19 global pandemic highlighted the need for highly competent primary care providers and exacerbated the healthcare workforce shortage, and naturopathic physicians can and should be legally empowered to help meet this need.
Scope Modernization & the 2025 Legislative Session
Modernization of naturopathic scope to better align with naturopathic physician training and recognition as primary care clinicians has been the top legislative goal of the WANP for over two decades, and we have filed bills in support of this goal nearly every Legislative Session since 1997. To kick off the 2025 Legislative Session and educate legislative offices about the naturopathic physician profession and current bills that matter to us, the WANP hosted a Naturopathic Physician Advocacy Day. After a morning of training, over 40 advocates for the naturopathic physician profession met with over 50 legislative offices over the course of an afternoon. In other words, we touched base with more than a third of our state legislature and had very meaningful conversations about naturopathic physician scope of practice, about practitioner compensation, and about the importance of insurance coverage of preventive primary care. Thank you to everyone who showed up to support naturopathic physicians and to all the legislators and legislative assistants who took the time to meet with us!
For the 2025 Legislative Session, we are incredibly excited to be working with Rep. April Berg (D-44) as the prime sponsor of House Bill 1888 - Concerning naturopathic physician scope of practice. We will use this Session to continue educating legislators on the importance of this bill and how it will help address key issues of access to care and cost reduction for Washingtonians.
Make sure you are signed up to receive our advocacy alerts and keep an eye on your inbox and on this page to stay informed about our immediate calls to action and needs with respect to our scope expansion.
Naturopathic Physician Reimbursement & the 2025 Legislative Session
The WANP continues to educate legislators about and to explore legislative strategy on advancing bills that would require insurance companies to reimburse naturopathic physicians the same amount as our conventionally trained colleagues for the same services. We are closely monitoring similar efforts by nurse practitioners and physician assistants here in Washington and by naturopathic physicians in Oregon. We continue to recognize this as a top priority for our doctors and we are laying a foundation that we will build on until we make this a reality.
The WANP has also been an active stakeholder in a broad interprofessional effort urging insurers to engage in annual contract reviews and negotiations with ALL credentialed providers - even those outside of major hospital or other systems. We are strong supporters of both House Bill 1655 - Â Concerning provider contract compensation - and House Bill 1589 - Concerning the relationships between health carriers and contracting providers - and we look forward to contributing further to the passage of these bills aimed at making significant changes to the relationships between insurers and contracting providers.
Outside of our efforts on our own priority bills, we constantly monitor and weigh in on bills that could impact naturopathic physicians in Washington State - during both Legislative Session and during interim.
Helping you help us! Here is your Legislative Action Toolkit!
Advanced Political Allyship: Engaging in Legislative Session
It turns out it's fairly easy to keep track of what is happening in our state legislature during session - so long as you know where to look. The state keeps updated committee rosters, bill information, meeting schedules, agendas, and live streams or recordings posted on our legislature's official website. Below, we'll link to the pages we frequent during Session:
- Homepage of the Washington State Legislature. During Session, this displays the full calendar for each day and provides links directly to legislative committees as well as bill information, rosters, and more.
- Committee Schedules, Agendas, and Documents. This is where we go to check out which bills have been scheduled for a hearing in any particular committee. Of course, our focus is on the health care committees (Health Care & Wellness in the House or Health & Long Term Care in the Senate), but you can search any committee you're interested in. Simply include which chamber, which committee, and the dates you are interested in, and click "Search." Once in the desired committee, you can see meeting agendas, documents, or click on "View Video" to access the live stream or the recording.
- Livestream and recordings. TVW provides access to any active livestreams of legislative hearings and to recordings of prior hearings. There's a lot to explore here if you're interested!
- House Health Care & Wellness Committee. Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee. These pages have all of the current members and staff of these committees of great importance to the WANP.
- Bill information. This page has links to all kinds of ways to search and find what bills have been filed. You can see all bills that have been introduced, bills that have been voted out of committee, and activity reports. You can search for bills by topic, sponsor, or status. Once you click on a bill, you can see the bill's sponsors, note exactly where it is in the legislative process, access the original bill language and any amendments or substitutions, read any bill reports developed by legislative staff, access any relevant videos related to the bill, and comment on the bill.
There is a lot more information available, but this list should get you started to becoming a more informed ally and advocate for our profession. We hope you find it helpful!
Learn more at our upcoming Advocacy events!
Join the WANP's Legislative Affairs Committee and our lobbyist to receive up to the minute updates on our legislative efforts and progress. You can learn a lot about our political priorities, ask questions, and interact with your colleagues at these advocacy-focused events. (Sometimes we even have legislators join us!)