ashington knows the      Healthcare Leadership Council as a leading voice for health reform. The Regional Advocacy Program ensures that policy makers also know HLC outside the Beltway. HLC’s regional advocacy takes a number of forms, including:

• Local advocacy teams
• Congressional meetings in home
  districts
• Special programs
• Grassroots mobilization
• Public relations

In 2007, HLC held nearly 200 local meetings or events with members of Congress, congressional candidates, and congressional staff.

Operating within key congressional districts and magnifying the voices of people our lawmakers represent, we believe the HLC Regional Advocacy Program  is valuable to members of Congress because healthcare is essentially local.

In district meetings with Representative Philip English (R-PA) and Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO)

HLTeams:
Linchpin of the HLC
Regional Advocacy Program

he HLC Regional Advocacy Program has six regional directors who build local coalitions in congressional districts. These coalitions, known as Health Leadership Teams, replicate HLC’s unique position in Washington as a voice of multiple sectors of the health care industry. They consist of HLC member company executives, local business allies, and health advocates from the community. HLTeams provide opportunities to promote policies, plans, and programs that advance America’s consumer-centered health care system.

We know solutions to such complex problems require the support and input of Democrats and Republicans, labor and business, as well as non-profits. So we have partnered with others in the community as well. For example, to increase access to coverage for the uninsured, we have:

• Taken the lead in advocating for SCHIP
   reauthorization and improvement
• Partnered with Families USA and other
   “strange bedfellows” on the Health
   Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured
• Worked with the Robert Wood Johnson
   Foundation on Covering the Uninsured Week
• Led the Health Access America coalition

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