We Took Our Patients’ Voices to DC

By Dennis Walto, CEO
Spring Advocacy Conference photo

Children’s Health Fund is committed to ensuring kids can access healthcare whenever they need it. That’s why every year we make sure the voices of our medical providers across the country echo powerfully in Washington DC and are heard loud and clear by our nation’s elected officials.

Dennis Johnson photo
Dennis Johnson, EVP Policy & Advocacy at CHF; Senator Debbie Stabenow; Kate Conway, Group Practice Director, Dept. of Pediatrics, Henry Ford Health System from Detroit

At our Spring Advocacy Conference last week, we called on experts to deepen our provider’s understanding of policy and government actions affecting the children we serve. With this knowledge, and their authentic and poignant on-the-ground experiences, our provider-advocates met with close to 80 senators, representatives and their staff to advocate on behalf of their patients, families and communities about the importance of federal programs like Medicaid that make our work possible. We told stories of inspiration where our mobile clinics made the difference between life and death. We talked about the importance of oral health to a child’s well-being. Finally, we made the case for the future — our future — and the kids we see every day.

Children represent 23 percent of our country’s population but receive less than eight percent of our nation’s federal budget. We are not giving children the priority they need and deserve!

Tammy Duckworth photo
Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth; Chicago Medical Director Icy Cade-Bell, MD; Illinois Senator Dick Durbin

Our advocacy underscored the need to grow key funding and leverage our expertise on the front lines serving children, no matter where they come from or their ability to pay.

Through this advocacy, we ARE and continue to make a difference in the lives of children living poverty.

James Risch photo
Idaho Senator James Risch; Idaho Dental Director, Adam Hodges, DDS; John Decarvalho, Director of Advocacy and Policy Communications at CHF
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