Here are helpful links to your elected officials and offices and scroll down to the bottom of the page for letter templates!
Find Your Legislator: This link will take you to the Washington State Legislature Page. Type in your address and zip code to find the links to your legislative district.
Contact the Governor: This is Christine Gregoire's contact page. You may send an email directly from this site. It also gives you an address to write to and phone number to call. WRITE, EMAIL, and CALL OFTEN!!!!!!
Maria Nardella: Program Manager of Children with Special Health Care Needs at the WA Dept. of Health. Phone: 360-236-3573
Tom Campbell: California congressman who has contacted the DOH and asked for the specifics on the cuts made. He's shown interest in what's going on seems to have an open ear and concern for our problem. We're hoping he may share his concern with our representatives.
Maria Cantwell: U.S. Senator for Washington state
Patty Murray: U.S. Senator for Washington state
Cathy McMorris: U.S. Representative 5th District
Washington Government page: This gives you all the District Reps and the senators websites and email. It would be great if we could send out emails to them all because it's a STATEWIDE issue.
Washington Department of Health: Feedback email form
Washington Department of Health: Contact info.
Washington Department of Health: Office of Policy, Legislative and Constituent Relations
Washington State Board of Health: Strategic Goals-Goal 2:Assure access to critical health services
Washington Department of Health: Community and Family Health page. Email the Assistant Secretary and Riley Peters with Maternal Child Health
MCH Pyramid of Health Services: This is a VERY important link. Go to the page and at the bottom, click on Understanding Title V of the Social Security Act. Then go to page 8. It explains the Pyramid of Health Services. The big argument by the WDOH is that they classify the Maxillofacial program as a Direct Service. The current trend for the DOH during funding cuts is to eliminate Direct Service programs and keep the Infrastructure programs. We believe that our program actually falls under the Infrastructure chunk of the pyramid. Look at the defining characteristics of Infrastructure and their definition.
Lori Ullman sent me this mass emailing list for you to cut and paste from:
maria.nardella@doh.wa.gov, maria_cantwell@cantwell.senate.gov, Cathy.McMorris@mail.house.gov, Rick.Larsen@mail.house.gov, sreed@secstate.wa.gov, watreas@tre.wa.gov, sonntagb@sao.wa.gov, emailago@atg.wa.gov, cplwa@dnr.gov, feedback@ospi.wednet.edu , mikek@oic.wa.gov, Davidcr@spokaneschools.org, scrump@ptera.net, sue.shoblom@doh.wa.gov, jennifer.mcnamara@doh.wa.gov, Sue.Grinnell@doh.wa.gov, John.Peppert@doh.wa.gov, mih.support@doh.wa.gov, marilyn.hanna@doh.wa.gov, christy.davis@doh.wa.gov, stacy.eaves@doh.wa.gov
Many have asked about an online petition. While petitions are great and reflect support for a cause, we have a short amount of time to accomplish a very large task. Calling, emailing and writing your elected officials will be the most powerful ways we can bring attention to this issue in our short time frame.
Thanks to Lynne Lumsden we have some letter templates on our site. One you may use as a parent who is impacted by the cut and the other will be for family, friends and community members who support our efforts. Please know that you do not have to write as much as on the templates. A simple 1 paragraph would be fine as well. The point is to make our issue "visible"! Speak from the heart. These will be available if you don't feel comfortable drafting your own letter or just want some ideas of things to say. I have learned that the most impacting letters are those from families explaining the specific impact the cuts will have on their child.
Templates: (I tried to do them in template format where you could write in the lines. Thought I had it figured out, but it didn't work. I'll try later. For now, you can copy and paste to Word and go from there.)
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