CCF's Regional Meeting - Just What the Dr. Ordered

By Michele Johnson

Managing Attorney and Co-Founder, Tennessee Justice Center

The Southern Regional Meeting of Transforming Health Care Coverage for Children and Families was just what the doctor ordered.  For anyone feeling down about health reform or frustrated with the status quo, you need to attend this meeting!  The technical information about the health care bill, the messaging workshop and success stories from other southern states were so valuable and hopeful.

The messaging workshop put on by Ed Walz from Spitfire Strategies was full of practical tips about how to be heard by policymakers and the public. Ed, always entertaining and compelling, gave us the recipe for communicating effectively. Among other things, he taught us how to write effective blog articles (like this one, I hope!), letters-to-the-editor, and blast emails. By day's end, I not only felt like I could do it, but we had actually done it in hands-on activities.

The presentations about both the nitty-gritty of the health reform bill and the opportunities of CHIPRA were extraordinary. They contained crucial data about the demographics of the eligible but uninsured children who are waiting for us to reach them now.  They laid out who will be helped by reform and how. What useful tools to have at our fingertips as we try to raise resources to reach these children! The health reform waiting game has seemed paralyzing in so many ways, but these presentations gave me a "to do list" of practical and immediate steps to enroll children and keep them enrolled.

My favorite part of the conference was seeing and hearing about the experiences of my southern sister states.  I heard from friends, old and new, about the challenges they are facing and overcoming. Sometimes working for health care for children in the South can be isolating and demoralizing, so hearing from others facing similar hurdles was moving. Amazing work is going on in our region!  I left the conference reminded of Anne Frank's quote "How wonderful that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve"...healthcare for children in the South!

Thanks, Georgetown Center for Children and Families and partner organizations for using your extraordinary talents to improve policies every single day for children in Tennessee and all over America. 

Editor's Note: Say Ahhh! readers aren't fooled by Michele's modesty as we've seen some great blogs out of her before.  With all the nice things she's saying about CCF and our friends, we just might have to make her a regular.