On December 22, 2008, students and members of the faculty of the Department of Public Health Sciences were heavily involved with putting on the Sacramento Town Hall Meeting on Health Reform solicited by the new administration of (now) President Barak Obama.    It was a BIG success!  We had a terrific panel of health experts and a very active audience of over 130 participants!

In early December, 2008 Secretary-Designate Thomas Daschle, on behalf of Mr. Obama, asked that “Town Hall” meetings across the United States be hosted so that the new Administration could receive input “directly from the people” on health care and public health issues that affected them.  The Daschle folks provided a participant’s guide, a moderator’s guide, and a web site for administration of this program.  They were very well prepared!!

They, and we, needed to be because this event was put together very quickly!  They asked that the Town Hall Meetings take place between December 15th and December 31st with a report to be sent to them as soon as possible after the event so that they could “Hit the ground running” on health reform. The “Health Care Reform Town Hall Meeting Transcript” is that report, sent directly to Secretary Daschle in late December.

For our particular event we had a panel of health policy experts talk very briefly their view on key issues in this area.  Each panelist (and there were 5) had about 5 minutes to let the audience know their perspective on “Things you don’t want to overlook”.  Our panelists included:  

• Cindy Ehnes, Director of California Dept. of Managed Healthcare
• Mark Horton,  Director of the California Department of Public Health
• Bill Durston, emergency physician practicing in Sacramento for 25 years
• Geri Jenkins, current chair of the Counsel for presidents of CA Nurse’s Organization, America’s largest nurse union
• Sara Rogers, senate consultant for SB 840: CA universal health care act sponsored by Senator Mark Leno

Over 130 people signed up for our event, and they were very active participants!  Please read the attached PDF to get a very vivid view of the input of our panelists and the concerns of our community participants.  We got a lot of very valuable feedback on this event and hope you find these materials quite valuable.

Special thanks to Ellen Warner, of the David Taylor company for inviting me to be the moderator of the evening and for being a very capable hostess that night.  To Steve McCurdy, Director of our MPH Program for agreeing to help with coordination, logistics and support.  To Usha Vyas and Adela del Valle (both undergraduates at UCD) who provided transcription services and Denise De Luz, a friend and colleague from the Diversity Coalition who agreed to help greet and usher our many, many guests.  And, finally an artistic thanks to Ryan Blake for taking these excellent photos you can see on the Health Care Reform Slide Show.

Looking forward to a better health policy future, I am

Yours truly,

John Troidl


Academic Administrator/Faculty
Department of Public Health Sciences
UC Davis School of Medicine
Davis, California
jjtroidl@ucdavis.edu

 

 

 

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