Write to Your Senators and Representatives

Write to Your Senators and Representative

One of the ways you can help cure tinnitus is to reach out personally to your Senators and Representative in Congress. We have provided you sample text below which you can copy and paste into a letter, email or fax and send to the appropriate policymakers. If you are unsure who your Senators and Representative are, you can locate them at Congress.org. Simply use the "Get Involved" feature located all the way to the right of the Web page. All you need to enter is your zip code and it will retrieve your Congressional representation for your state and district.

Feel free to use all, part of, or none of the text below. And definitely feel free to personalize the letter based on your own tinnitus experience. Nothing takes the place of personal testimony!
 

Sample Letter: (printer-friendly version)

Date

The Honorable First name, Last name
Address
City, State Zip

Dear Senator/Representative [Last name]:
 
For the past six years, the U.S. Congress included language in their annual Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) appropriations bill about tinnitus, commonly referred to as "ringing in the ears." The committee reports have directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to take a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach to advancing  the science on tinnitus toward better treatments and a cure. The American Tinnitus Association (ATA), an organization whose mission I wholly support, has made this collaboration possible through their advocacy efforts. I ask as your constituent to support the efforts of ATA and help all tinnitus sufferers in the U.S. and in the state of ____________.
 
As a person with tinnitus, I am asking you to make sure that tinnitus research language is included in future appropriations bills. May 13 - 19, 2012 is this year’s National Tinnitus Awareness Week, and I wanted to take this opportunity to ask for your support to help keep the momentum that ATA has started, to keep the focus on tinnitus.
 
This expanded research is needed now more than ever before. Research that can offer a cure or even some relief is important to me and to the millions of Americans who have, or who are at risk for getting, tinnitus.
 
In the U.S., 50 million experience tinnitus. Of those, 16 million have chronic tinnitus and 2 million are completely disabled from their tinnitus. Additionally, tinnitus disproportionately impacts veterans and military personnel. In fact, our brave men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are reporting the highest incidences of tinnitus in veterans, ever. The Department of Veterans Affairs FY 2011 Annual Benefits report, listed tinnitus as the top service-connected disability for veterans from all periods of service.

The incessant sounds of tinnitus interfere with sleep, conversation, concentration and life in general. If we do not continue to support the scientific community in pursuit of a tinnitus cure, many millions more will have to suffer - some their entire lives - from this condition which can and will be cured.

Please support any increases in appropriations to the NIH, DoD and the VA that promote this important cause . In addition, I ask that you applaud the efforts of these agencies for the resources they’ve put toward tinnitus and ask them to continue their efforts together. Now is a crucial time for tinnitus research.  Great strides have been made in recent years and it is imperative that this research can continue. We cannot do it without your support.
 
Sincerely,
(Your name and organization’s name, if you represent a group)
(Your address)
(Phone number or email address)   
       
      

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