September 2014 RESULTS National Grassroots Conference Call Notes – Global Campaigns

Dr. Joanne Carter, Executive Director

Welcome everyone to the RESULTS global national conference call for September 2014.

A special welcome to any new folks who are on the call for the first time. I believe we have a new group in Burlington, Vermont, on the call - welcome. We have about ten events happening all around the country this month to start new RESULTS groups so we’ll be welcoming many more folks in the next few months.

We are kicking into high gear on our campaign to ensure that in January 2015 the US makes a bold $1 billion, four-year pledge to do our share to fully fund Gavi—so that Gavi can support low-income countries to immunize 300 million children from 2016-2020 and thereby save five million children’s lives. Vaccines are a centerpiece of the strategy to end preventable child deaths in the next 15 years—because of the protection they provide against illness and death, but also because they help build the systems to deliver a range of critical health services to poorest children in the poorest communities around the world.

In just a few moments I’ll introduce our very special conference call guest—Dr. Orin Levine, Director of Vaccine Delivery, in the Global Development Program at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But I first want to thank you for the amazing work you’ve done in getting face-to-face meetings with members of Congress during the August Congressional recess. You have had at least 18 face-to-face meetings with representatives and six face-to-face meetings with senators (including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) and another 23 meetings with House and Senate staff. That’s just since our RESULTS International Conference in late July. We know from surveys of Congressional staff that FTF meetings with constituents are the single most important way to impact a member of Congress. Congress will be going back to the districts the week after next and will be there until the November election, so if you haven’t gotten a meeting then keep asking till you get a meeting, and also keep going to those town hall meetings—you’ll hear later in the call from volunteers about how they’ve used those meetings. Town Halls are a powerful place to raise poverty issues and get face time with members. And also a great place to ask for a follow-up meeting with your members of Congress—it’s hard for them to say no!

Your work is paying off in getting impressive bipartisan support on a Gavi House resolution and there’s a bipartisan Senate resolution on the way. But these are only a first step in our Gavi campaign. We’re going to need to be creative and aggressive—in a good way—to make this U.S. pledge happen at the scale we want. Later in today’s call John Fawcett, our Legislative Director, will be brainstorming with you on all the things you can do to build leadership with Congress and the media to achieve this Gavi pledge.

The other hugely important action we’re focusing on this month is generating media on Gavi. Media will be essential to getting a bold pledge from the Obama administration on Gavi—and getting Congress to weigh in with the administration. There’s no better moment than just weeks before election—when all politicians are paying close attention to newspaper opinions and issues—to get this coverage. And we will be compiling all of your media and delivering it to the Obama administration.

This Gavi campaign is also a powerful way to build not just support in Congress but also build the strength—the advocacy muscle--of your groups— through identifying and training media support people in your groups

Through using Gavi to engage both local grasstops leaders in your community--- and a wider set of folks who might not be ready to join your group but would take a few key actions over the next months.

Now it’s my great pleasure to introduce our very special conference call guest, Dr. Orin Levine of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Orin Levine leads the foundation’s work to accelerate the introduction of newvaccines and other key technologies, and also to improve systems to deliver routine immunizations. He is the Foundation’s focal point with Gavi so he’s the perfect person to speak with us today.

Before joining the foundation’s Global Development Program, Dr. Levine was Professor of International Health, and Executive Director of the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Levine brings together deep technical knowledge with vision and ambition for expanding access to these life-saving technologies.

So welcome and we’d love to hear from you about what you see is at stake in the upcoming replenishment of Gavi and any specific examples or stories you’d want to share on the impact of Gavi in the poorest countries.

Dr. Orin Levine, Director of Vaccine Delivery for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

  • Grateful for the important work that RESULTS is doing on Gavi
  • Supporting Gavi is urgent, right, smart, important
  • Gavi has been a game-changer. Every single Gavi country is using the pentavalent vaccine. We got the world to change the basic vaccine that every child gets. Also, Gavi allows us to get things rapidly scaled up.
  • Gavi has averted about 6 million child deaths in its first 15 years, Gavi has the ability to nearly double that in the next 5 years through the introduction of a new batch of important vaccination efforts.
  • Vaccines are a great story – we’ve actually got the machinery that is delivering and protecting kids, but we’re not getting that message out. There’s a lot of competition for attention, but vaccines need air time because they are really tools for social justice.
  • In the field is when I get the reminder of why I’m doing this work. Work in Nigeria demonstrated to me that the availability of vaccines is seen as a sacred gift. Work in Ethiopia demonstrated to me the incredible commitment of healthworkers.

Q&A: What is Gavi doing re: healthcare delivery? Healthcare delivery systems must be strengthened, yes, for two reasons – so we can reach every child who needs vaccines and the routine vaccination program is often the backbone of the healthcare program for women & children because so much other care and consultation can go on during those visits. Almost ¼ of Gavi’s funds goes to this strengthening and the reducing of inequities.

Are community healthworkers trained to distribute vaccinations? If not, what are we doing to build that capacity? Community healthworkers are the centrepiece of the system and are an inspiration. Inadequate infrastructure to do their jobs is a problem. Gavi helps.

With what’s going on in the world right now, how do we get the attention of the media, the nation, Congress to put Gavicenterstage? We must get across the message that, if we were to address the vaccines issue, we could help create a more stable world.

Where could we get some up-to-date information and success stories on Gavi? First stop, the Gavi website:

Systems support – what does it entail? It’s country-determined. Huge thermoses, use of solar power, etc. – awesome inventions to help with the infrastructure issues.

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Dr. Carter, cont’d

I want to end by letting you know that New York Times columnist Nick Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, authors of Half the Sky, have a new book coming out later this month - A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity.

The book is about making a difference here and abroad—a road map to becoming the most effective global citizens we can be.

Exciting news: the book includes a mention of RESULTS!

Something Nick Kristof said to me via email: “Truly keep up the great work. One of the points I sometimes make is that a person of modest means can sometimes in effect produce more financing for a cause, through advocacy toward those who hold the purse strings, than a billionaire donor.”

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John Fawcett, Legislative Director

  • H. Res. 688 – Bipartisan – In support of Gavi. Now up to 41 cosponsors (including 14 Republicans). Terrific work! If you made a request or got a cosponsorship commitment over the recess, follow up now. The Senate version is anticipated to be out this week, led by Sens. Menendez, Coons, Rubio, and Boozman
  • Letters to the Obama Administration and to other being developed – will be shared soon.
  • Gavi needs $7.5 billion to vaccinate 300 million children from 2016 through 2020, and we want the U.S. to pledge $1 billion over four years at the replenishment conference in early 2015. What do we need to do?
  1. Convince on the merits
  2. Clear away the excuses
  3. Make this politically important

Open brainstorm on how we can achieve our goals in this campaign:

  1. Connect the Ebola threat – both what’s happening with people’s health through it and with its prominence – without stirring fear or taking advantage of a terrible crisis . . . and connect it with Gavi. (i.e., the countries where we’re seeing the outbreak of Ebola has some of the weakest healthcare delivery systems)
  2. Poor local vaccination rates can be a local media hook.
  3. Have a 3-minute TED talk that could be recorded and shared with others, featuring our Dr. Levine and Dr. Carter, including Dr. Levine’s points on healthcare delivery/systems
  4. Collect the shareable personal stories of both the expat community and local health leaders and their view on the importance of healthcare delivery.
  5. Piggyback on the current PBS Nova series on vaccines.

Ken Patterson, Director of Global Advocacy

Happy Saturday, RESULTS activists!Let’s start out right away with a couple of shares focused on bird-dogging our elected officials.

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Thanks to Shirley Jane Hobbs of Rapid City and Minh Nguyen of Houston for your inspiring shares on bird-dogging!

(Shirley Jane, your share highlights the fact that there is no substitute for in person contact with our members of Congress—senators and representatives. Because of your encounter you are better equipped to work with the staff on moving the senator into action—hopefully it will help you break the logjam. Great work, great example.)

(Minh, it is great for all of us to note that taking advantage of these kinds of opportunities is not easy or comfortable, but forcing ourselves outside of our comfort zone will yield results. This encounter cannot help but be memorable for the representative—he saw his child engaged by the issue of child vaccines. Another great example of using public moments make personal contact with our elected officials.)

Thanks to everyone who made efforts during the August recess to meet with their members of Congress. There is no substitute for in-person contact with these people, and often times it takes persistence, creativity, and working through our fear. We have much to do in coming months, and the September/October election cycle is a great opportunity for us to get in person with our elected officials. Let’s follow Shirley’s and Minh’s examples.

I want to next spend one minute telling you about another aspect of our Gavi campaign. You all know that we are trying to generate a $1 billion pledge from the administration to create great change in the world. But we have also put in place extra support for you to build leadership in your groups. We have asked all groups to identify three positions of leadership: an action network manager, a media point person, and a grasstops point person. And we are staffed up to provide additional support those leadership positions:

·Lisa Marchal will be working with all of the action network managers to put more people in action in your community and to create a pipeline of new activists for your group –

·Teresa Rugg will be working with all of the grasstops point people to identify and develop influential partnerships in your community that will help us reach our Gavi objectives –

·Allison Gallaher and the communications team are providing extra support to the media point people, including organizing two in person media trainings. One of them is happening today in Seattle, the other will happen in Houston in two weeks –

I strongly, strongly encourage every group to take these opportunities. This is about building stronger groups, spreading leadership, and being more effective. Let’s face it, nobody is going to stick around RESULTS too long if they’re operating as spectators, or if they do not have the opportunity to really feel like they are part of our successes–RESULTS advocacy is a contact sport. If you do not currently have people able to fill these positions, recruit somebody. Tell them that you really need their help over the next five months securing a commitment to vaccinate 300 million children and save 5 million lives, and that they are the right person to be your action network manager, your grasstops point person, or your media point person. Let them know that they will receive training and support.

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Colin Smith, Deputy Director of Communications

  • Shout-out to Greg Campbell of St. Louis for his articulate, nuanced letter to the editor which references Ebola.
  • Shared with colleagues that he anticipates at least 20-30 editorials, 20-30 op-eds, and a few dozen letters – the colleagues couldn’t believe it! Very proud moment.
  • Your media toolkit:

Polling question: How many editors will you be pitching on Gavi using our editorial packet in the coming two weeks? See attached accompanying polling data for the breakdown of responses.

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Roleplay: Following Up With Your Editor/Writer After Pitchinga Gavi Editorial

Some sample language for follow-up with your editor after you pitch the idea of a Gavi editorial. What could you come up with that would work in your setting?
Hello! I’m calling to follow up on the vaccines editorial idea I sent to you on ______. Might you have two minutes to chat?
[Why, yes I do!]
As I mentioned in my email, the U.S. has a chance to be part of vaccinating 300 million more children over the next 5 years and, consequently,keeping millions of children from dying needlessly. Have you given any more thought to the idea of writing about Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, ordo you have any questions about the materials I sent?

  • I have appreciated your continuing coverage of the Ebola outbreak, which is continuing to concern the global health community, and I believe that discussion of common communicable diseases we can prevent would be of relevant interest to readers . . .
  • I have noticed that local pharmacies are ramping up promotion of fall vaccination season, and so . . .
  • The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge got a lot of air time this fall, and as people are still reflecting on the amazing outpouring of support the challenge received, I thought it might be relevant to talk about another chance that the U.S. has to save lives, this time through vaccines we already have.
  • In our state, our economy is helped immeasurably by Eli Lilly & Co. and Roche, both leaders in the health and vaccination fields – so we understand the value of this preventive measure . . .
  • All parents and guardians want their children to have a healthy start in life, and so there’s a natural understanding of the child vaccine issue between families here and families abroad . . .

Call Recording, PowerPoint, and Notes: