Children's Hospitals Today - Spring 2018 - 12

ROUNDS / FROM EXPERIENCE

Employees
at Children's
Hospital Colorado
write postcards
to lawmakers.

The next frontier
of advocacy
Here's how children's hospitals
engage employees and
communities in public policy.
BY MATTHEW WRIGHT

W

hile walking to the
parking lot after
work last February, Lucile
Packard Children's Hospital
Stanford resident Jennifer
DeCoste-Lopez, M.D., approached fellow resident
Lee Trope, M.D. "Can we talk
about what the heck is going
on in the world?" she asked.
D e C o s te Lopez was
Learn more about
this issues affecting
r e fe r r i n g
kids and health care,
to the proshare your story,
and take action at
posals to
speaknowforkids.org.
repeal the
Affordable
Care Act and cut Medicaid,
and proposed immigration
policy changes. "This is
crazy," she said. "Everything
that's going on is threatening our patients. What can
we do?"
This inspired the two
residents to coordinate with
the hospital's pediatric advocacy program director,
government relations team

12

and American Academy of
Pediatrics representative to
launch a coalition of pediatric advocates. The group
has two goals: organize
the hospital's professional
community to advocate for
children; and educate future
pediatricians on policy issues affecting patients.
The coalition's activities include meetings with
policymakers,
postcardwriting campaigns directed
to elected officials, speaking at town halls held by
members of Congress, and
curating a story bank to
highlight the real-life effect
of legislative proposals.
When constituents contact their legislators, they
can have a big influence on
them. Research from The
OpenGov Foundation finds
the most valued constituent communications are
authentic and demonstrate
effort through storytelling.

CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL S TODAY Spring 2018

Children's hospitals across
the country are taking on efforts to ensure constituent
voices are heard on issues
that matter most to kids.

GENERATING ENGAGEMENT
Throughout 2017, leaders
at Nationwide Children's
Hospital in Columbus, Ohio,
held forums to listen to employees who were eager to
learn more about legislation
that might affect their hospital and patients. "It was born
from a renewed interest in
the political process playing
out across the country," says
Heather Ulrey, administrative director for external
and government relations.
To mobilize in the moment, the hospital focused
Medicaid advocacy efforts
on organizing more than
12,000 employees, 77,000
national donors and 408,000
consumers.
CEO
Steve
Allen also authored several

thought leadership articles
that generated media coverage. Nationwide achieved 11
different media placements
reaching an audience of over
160 million people.
"Advocacy is an effective
tool for engaging staff, donors and general consumers,"
says Donna Teach, chief marketing and communications
officer at Nationwide. "We
were pleased and surprised
by the high levels of engagement-especially from donors." The hospital generated
more than 1,800 legislative
contacts among its national
donor base. Its Facebook
community was engaged
with nearly 6,000 legislative
contacts generated through
just two optimized posts.
Teach says cooperation
among the hospital's government relations team,
foundation and marketing
teams was essential. "We
received
little
negative
http://www.speaknowforkids.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Children's Hospitals Today - Spring 2018
