How to Participate
Visit the Oral Health National Advocacy Call WebEx site and click "Register". Once you have completed the registration form, click "Submit".  You will then receive login information prior to the event date.

As the primary election season winds down and we get closer to the November 6th general election, there is a still plenty of time for you and your health to make a difference by registering and encouraging your staff, patients and communities to vote. Over 200 organizations from 44 states have so far downloaded the Community Health Vote Toolkit and many more have let us know they plan to be part of Community Health Vote this year. There is still time for you to join them and help empower your community.

Because the goal of Community Health Vote is not just registering new voters, but also to provide information and assistance to encourage every eligible voter to vote, we are asking every center to encourage as many people and staff as possible to use our online registration portal or to complete our "Pledge to Vote" brochures. Even if you are not registering new voters, directing clients to our online portal or distributing and collecting our Pledge to Vote forms will give everyone who wants or needs reminders and information about voting in their state the opportunity to receive this information. Pledge to Vote brochures are available for the cost of shipping as long as you commit to distribute, collect and return completed pledge forms to us. For information about Pledge to Vote email us at CHCVote@nachc.org.

To support your Community Health Vote efforts, NACHC will continue to provide tools and training assistance:

You can download an updated Community Health Vote Toolkit

Our online voter registration portal is now accessible in both English and Spanish

You can now order low cost voter engagement posters, buttons, stickers and other items in both English and Spanish from our online store: http://bit.ly/CHVstore.

We are announcing a series of health center voter engagement webinars, including:

• Non-Partisan Voter Registration at Your Health Center: The Basics
• Non-Partisan Voter Registration at Your Health Center: Motivating Patients & Staff to Vote
• Working with Volunteers and Partnering with Other Organizations for Voter Registration at Your Health Center
• Tracking Your Voter Engagement Success
• Best practices: Models of Successful Voter Engagement at Health Centers

For more information or to register for a webinar go to http://bit.ly/CHVwebinars.

NACHC staff and some of our partners are available to provide webinars and some on site trainings for your center; to request a webinar or training email CHCVote@nachc.org.

NACHC's Community Health Vote GOTV Poster Contest is also underway; the deadline to enter is June 29!

There is still time for you and your health center to be a part of this historic effort to engage our communities. We hope you will.

Posters can include, but are not limited to, photos, text, or drawings - anything that artistically and compellingly encourages health center patients and staff to vote.  

The two winning posters will be used in health centers across the nation! Entries in English and/or Spanish are encouraged; one English language and one Spanish language poster will each be selected as winners.  

All ages are encouraged to participate in this effort; poster creators under the age of 18 must have a parent or guardian submit their poster. Submissions must be received electronically by June 29, 2012. A photo of a submitter's completed poster or a scanned image or electronic version of the poster submission should be uploaded, along with the creator's information, using the online poster contest form.  

Click here for complete rules and to enter the contest.

As more and more health centers are participating in our non-partisan Community Health Vote campaign, we will continue to roll out new tools and information to help and encourage staff and clients in this effort. If you have not already downloaded our Community Health Vote Toolkit, I encourage you to do that now. In addition to the toolkit, we are also now making available:

Online Voter Registration: We are excited to announce a new Community Health Vote tool that allows anyone to register to vote or update their voter registration online, while at the same time giving individuals the opportunity to sign up for Community Health Vote reminders via text or email. Individuals can also sign up as health center advocates through the same site. This new tool is now live at http://www.saveourchcs.org/register-to-vote.cfm.  Any health center can use this tool to allow patients and staff to register, and you can even use it on your own health center website to track how many people your center helped register to vote. To receive a custom registration tool, email CHCVote@nachc.org.

Civic Engagement Videos: Tom Perez, J.D., M.P.P. (Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice) and Dr. H. Jack Geiger (co-founder of Physicians for Human Rights and Physicians for Social Responsibility, and one of the fathers of the Health Center Program) spoke passionately about voter registration as a responsibility for health centers during the 8th Annual Geiger Gibson Symposium at the NACHC Policy & Issues Forum in March. Whether or not you were able to attend this year's Policy & Issues Forum, you won't want to miss what they said. Click here to view the videos; we hope you will also share these videos with your colleagues to help inspire them to get involved in your health center's voter registration effort.

May 22 Tele-Forum: As a follow up to his remarks at the P&I, Dr. Geiger will be the guest for a NACHC Tele-Forum open to all health center advocates on Tuesday, May 22, at 2pm ET. Please plan to join us to hear from Dr. Geiger, along with Bob Brandon, President of the Fair Elections Legal Network, to learn more about the importance of non-profit, non-partisan voter registration, and to ask any questions you may have. To join the Tele-Forum, we'll call you! Just update your advocate profile to include a direct phone number in the Tele-Town Hall field.

Even if you haven’t started yet, there is still time for every health center to help dramatically increase voter participation in its community. Make it happen!

Marc Wetherhorn
National Advocacy Director, NACHC 

Delivery Week Resources: Petition and Patient Letter templates are available in SPANISH. Visit the Campaign website to access translated templates and other important materials.

The November Petition and Letter Drive has four parts:

1. Begin Collecting Petitions Signatures & Patient Letters IMMEDIATELY: access template petitions and patient letters from the Campaign for America’s Health Center’s website to customize to your health center and community. We understand that many health centers have been actively collecting signatures and letters since the Campaign began over the summer – ALL THE BETTER! Tally what have collected so far and add to your materials in the coming weeks so that all materials can be given to your Member of Congress during “Presentation Week”.
2. Schedule an In Person Meeting With Your Representative During Presentation Week – November 7^th-11^th: We have timed this national coordinated Presentation Week to coincide with the House Congressional recess so that health centers would have the best chance possible of scheduling in person meetings with their Representatives. Schedule your meeting with your Congressman and their staff so you can HAND DELIVER all the signed petitions and patient letters you collect and show your Member of Congress in a very concrete way how much the community supports YOUR health center. Once you’ve scheduled your meeting LET US KNOW by emailing us at grassroots@nachc.com.
3. Alert the Media – Send a Press Release & Letters to the Editor about Your Efforts: We want the whole community to know what’s at stake for health centers and how many people have signed on in support!  NACHC will soon be posting Presentation Week Media Templates to the Campaign website so that your health center can prepare and send press materials about your efforts for the November Petition and Letter Drive.  Press materials should include information about how many signatures and patient letters you have been able to collect and your plans to hand deliver your materials to your Congressman during the November Presentation Week. Also, coordinate at your health center to submit Letters to the Editor to your local paper to let the community know what’s at stake for the Health Centers Program and the patients you serve in the community.
4. Send Tallies and COPIES of Your Petitions & Patient Letters to NACHC: NACHC will be tracking the total number of signatures and patient letters collected nationally and by state. Send us copies of your materials and TALLIES of what you’ve collected for our national tracking efforts. You can send email copies to grassroots@nachc.com or hard copies to: ATTN: Amanda Pears Kelly, NACHC, 1400 Eye St, NW, Suite 910, Washington D.C. 20005

Mobilization Resources: To help prepare for the National Mobilization Call-In Day, in addition to the mobilization page on the website, advocates can now download a one page instructional flyer explaining how to place calls and providing the Health Center Message. NACHC will also have this flyer in SPANISH soon.

On September 20th, NACHC hosted a successful Tele-Town Hall call with the NACHC Policy Team and CEO, Tom Van Coverden. During the call, NACHC experts provided the latest updates on health center policy in Washington D.C. and took questions from health center advocates on the future of the Health Centers Program. The next National Mobilization Health Center Call-In Day was also announced on the call, scheduled for October 13th. Look for more information and details on the next National Mobilization Day coming soon! If you missed this important Tele-Town Hall, you can access the call recording on the NACHC website.

Plan to be on the call and to be a part of the Campaign for America's Health Centers! Update your advocate profile TODAY!