NHC UPDATE
Campaign to Put Patients First -June 2009
Amalia from California wrote, “Managing a child with a chronic, congenital condition is FULL TIME. Managing and advocating through the maze of insurance is FULL TIME. It’s worth it of course, but the ‘business’ of managing is wrong. Who suffers? Our patients. Please pass the Five Health Care Principles.”
David from Texas stated, “I am a 45-year-old male that has hydrocephalus. I am also bipolar and have diabetes. My medication costs are beyond belief. Last year alone we spent $11,000 in out of pocket medical care. . . I didn't ask for this. Who knows how long my demise will take, but I certainly don't want to leave my wife in a financial bind. Make [health reform] a reality.”
These are just two of the many stories that have been submitted by patients who visited the Campaign to Put Patients First website in March and April 2009. They join the
- More than 2,000 people who have signed the Petition for Health Care Change
- 3,289 unique visitors who went to the Campaign pages in those two months
- 506 followers on Twitter, including several media sites
- 170 people who joined the Facebook Putting Patients First Cause
These numbers are the result of only two month’s effort of NHC member organizations and staff to spread the word about the Campaign. To expand the Campaign messages to more audiences, the NHC, with the help of its web designer WebDuck, has begun social marketing research to reach out to other websites, bloggers, and patient advocates. Going into the Memorial Day Holiday, special emphasis was placed on encouraging individual patients to attend a congressional town hall meeting in their home district or talk their members of Congress at public events about the need for health care reform.
Engaging the public is only one leg of the Campaign. The initiative also is designed to involve patient advocacy organizations and create corporate supporters.
To demonstrate to members of Congress and their staff that the greater patient advocacy community is united behind the Five Principles of Health Care Reform, CEOs of NHC’s 48 member patient advocacy organizations all signed on in support of the Petition for Health Care Change. An advertisement of the petition appeared in Politico, a DC newspaper widely read by members of Congress and political activists.
The NHC tracks how visitors arrive at the main Campaign pages as part of its routine monitoring of the website. In April, visitors used links from the following sites to come to the Campaign:
- Arthritis Foundation
- Autism Society of America
- Interstitial Cystitis Association
- International Pemphigus & Pemphigoid Foundation
- National Alopecia Areata Foundation
- National Eczema Association for Science & Education
- Parent Project Muscular Distrophy
- Psoriasis Foundation
- Spina Bifida Association
NHC staff is working with its website designers to add rotating logos of member patient advocacy organizations to the Campaign site to bring greater visibility to their involvement in the initiative.
A goal for 2009 is to sign up four corporations as supporters of the Campaign. To date, meetings are currently underway with selected companies to discuss the Campaign goals. A list of target companies has been developed and staff is researching ways to engage them in the dialog for meaningful health care reform.
