"Message Me" CVC

GroundFloor Media was asked to host a message training session at the Colorado Voices for Coverage conference today. So although the weather was less than ideal and I left the office with enough gas to make it 6 miles (trip distance 14.8 miles), I managed to get us to the Qwest Learning Center unscathed. My faithful sidekick Amy Moynihan and I fought the IT battle and won just in time to talk about how the group could engage healthcare reform stakeholders who are not currently active in the reform process. This conference was an opportunity to bring together sectors of the community that typically do not interface and provide education in both organizing and the policy process.

Our good friend from Tennyson Center or Children and Every Child Matters, Becky Updike, asked us to host this session. Basically, The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative was one of twelve state based advocacy groups selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Community Catalyst to participate in the Consumer Voices for Coverage grant initiative, which supports state health care coverage efforts by fostering strong and robust advocacy infrastructures. Its a bit of a maze to try and figure out who is on first, but Community Catalyst is a national health advocacy organization dedicated to quality affordable care. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing the nation; all RWJF philanthropy efforts are devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans.

The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative is leading the statewide collaboration and will be supported by a leadership team of organizations including: the Business Forum on Health, the Colorado Council of Churches, and the Colorado Progressive Coalition. The Colorado Voices for Coverage project seeks to organize health reform at the state level to remove barriers that block consumers from adequate health care. The project will increase the understanding, commitment, and capacity of a broad group of stakeholders to bring underrepresented perspectives into health care policy discussions, to connect diverse constituencies, and to build sustainable state-wide advocacy network required to implement meaningful health reform.

Whew... I need a message map just to track the players involved in this worthwhile initiative.