| The Los Altos OneCareNow event was Monday
evening, 12/4/06, at Foothills Congregational Church. An overflow crowd of 110 people attended.
Many
stayed to ask further
questions of the speakers for at least 1/2 hour after the official
close of the program.
Halsted Holman, MD, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Stanford University
School of Medicine; Andrew McGuire, Executive Director, Health Care
for All, California; and Saul Eisenstat, MD, surgeon at El Camino
Hospital spoke about health care problems and about a single-payer
health care system approach to them.
The 22 minute DVD, "The Healthcare Solution: California OneCare"
was shown. It was an excellent and stimulating program.
Planning and arranging the meeting was done by members of the League
Of Women Voters, especially Delia Ybarra and Jane Bahr, who led the
effort. A major effort was made to publicize the meeting to all sections
of the community. A letter describing the purpose of the meeting was
sent to 19 churches and 30 different community organizations. This
was followed up with telephone calls several weeks later. The same
letter was circulated to all members of the staff at El Camino Hospital
at the request of one of our committee members. The local chapter
of the AAUW co-sponsored the meeting, and featured it on the cover
of their November newsletter. The LWV also featured it on the cover
of their November and December VOTERs, and notified all their members
via a flyer mailed to their homes and an e-mail list. The Town Crier
carried a nice article announcing the meeting, and both the Town Crier
and The Mountain View VOICE carried letters to the editor urging people
to attend. This very major and time-consuming publicity effort did
pay-off in attendance. |
