Town Hall Meeting Newsletter

June 2,

Town Hall Meeting Newsletter #5. Vol. 1, (from Dale Bell, Harry Wiland, Ron Barkley - 310 202 3370; and Jim Hood, in DC)

Dear ATSH Town Hall Meeting Teams and Friends,

Progress is the recurring theme of this Newsletter #5. We have good news to report; if the rest of you need tactical advice, or moral support, please contact me/us individually and we will try to help. Our goal is to try to enable you to succeed in planting a Town Hall Meeting in your community for the benefit of your caregivers and your advocates.

If you haven't already, please see the wonderful, warm letter from Jim Towey, Director of Faith Based and Community Initiatives at the White House, supporting our efforts. We are extremely proud and gratified.

Here is our overview as of now:

• #l: Kansas City (anticipated production date is August 26 or 27): I will visit Kansas City on June 18-19 to tend to final details. Myra Christopher, president of Midwest Bioethics Center, is trying to raise more funds than the $85,000 to tack on an overall public relations plan that should help every other Town Hall Meeting with a template applicable to respective venues and cities. We will have "content" topics identified this week. While I am in Kansas City, I will meet with national funder prospects as well as members of the public relations firm that may help in the design of the template. We will also determine local airdate on KCPT. I will talk with their set designer in advance so that we can create a set design that will travel from location to location easily and inexpensively. We will place the first $25,000 grant in a local bank account this week.
• #2: Cleveland (anticipated production date is the last Monday in September): We are drawing up a funding plan and a relationship plan with WVIZ who will act as the 501c3. Wiland-BellProductions will produce the event in association with WVIZ. Because the Mt. Sinai Healthcare Foundation was so active during the initial broadcast of ATSH, WVIZ is directly in the center of the coalition activity and will assume a major role in assembling the people. We are on track and believe we can meet the deadline.
• #3: Denver (we have a firm date now with AAHSA of October 27, a Monday). We have worked on format and content issues. They will be contacting Brian Williamson of MSNBC to see whether he will and/or can moderate. We still need to raise an additional $25,000 which we will try to do through foundations and individuals in the area. David Freidman is leading that effort. We will be writing an Executive Summary of the event so we can submit it to the local PBS station, with whom we have spoken and who are interested in our next step. Once it is written, we will share it with all of you.
• #4: Milwaukee (we have a target date of November 9, a Saturday): I will visit Milwaukee on June 20, after Kansas City, to finalize details of location, to interview prospective moderators, to meet with funder prospects, to make last arrangements with the PBS station management who will be able to videotape the event at the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee. We have a commitment of $25,000 from a local foundation and are awaiting word on several other applications that are pending. Marilyn Lange's team is doing marvelously well and will begin to enlarge their coalition base, deliberate about content and host issues.
• San Diego: In the language of "Seabiscuit," San Diego could come from behind to stage an event in mid-October. When I gave a speech there a week ago Friday, I met with the county people and other activists who are now caucusing to determine their capability, their timetable, and their funding prospects. First discussions were hopeful.
• Los Angeles: We had a meeting with a potential corporate funder this week which could ignite the THM/LA and attract the other funders who have remained in the wings until someone antes up first. We are continuing to plot.
• Boston: WGBH is the first PBS station to use ATSH as a "pledge special" in August. They are also rebroadcasting it tonight. How well they do will significantly affect how other PBS stations will use the first program, both as pledge and as rebroadcast in National CareGiver's Month in November. You can encourage your own station to do this, too, simply by calling them and telling them that you represent a coalition-or many!!! We have received strong interest from a small potential funder after we held a series of meetings with WGBH and the University of Massachusetts' Gerontology Institute at McCormack Institute. We may have an overall coalition coordinator who will assemble a team for an April 2004 event to be broadcast in Older Americans Month next May. Meanwhile, NFCA is holding a web-cast THM in Boston in September 2003 that will trigger a rebroadcast of ATSH on WGBH. The Boston PBS station is very enthused about our plans. The Boston Community Foundation might also become involved in our project.
• Seattle: Nora Gibson continues to assemble people for her coalition. We expect she will have a critical mass shortly that will require that I go to address them, as I did in Kansas City.
• Michigan: Cheri Mollison has inquired as to whether they could hold one in Lansing and/or Detroit. She now has a starter kit and is going through her first steps. We know the Detroit PBS station very well.
• Rural Kansas: Stacey Boothe of the AOA there is hoping that her group can assemble what is necessary so that we could conduct our last THM in rural Kansas next summer, just prior to the National THM in DC proposed for September/October 2004. She feels that they have some rural interests and needs that cannot be addressed in a "city" environment. Tentative target date: June 2004.
• Chicago: I had a good, preliminary conversation with the Chicago Community Trust. Now we have to assemble a coalition(s) to make something happen in the Windy City. Not to have Chicago, or Boston, for that matter, would not be good. They are essential. I have started trying to put people together again after the ASA. Marilyn Hennessy at RRF is supportive.
• South Florida: I have not heard from Rona in several weeks but will get an update shortly this week and put it out. Florida is key to this effort because of their political and demographic importance.
• New York: Robin Fenley of DFTA has expressed interest in trying to set up a THM. It may take place in the Borough of Queens which was the first to hold a ATSH THM, untelevised, in January 2003. We will work through the Borough President, Helen Richards, who hosted the first one.
• St. Paul/Minneapolis: We have new interest from new people here and will continue to pursue it this week.
• Indianapolis: One coalition member has taken the starter kit to the state and city aging people. We are awaiting reaction.
• Washington, DC: Robert Friedland, Executive Director of the Center on Aging at Georgetown University, has agreed to "host" our National Town Hall Meeting next fall. Target date will be late September/early October. We will begin to seek national funding for this $200,000 project. Our goal will be to bring together Federal and State people to have a discussion about accountability and responsibility and solutions. Since much of caregiving legislation/initiatives begin at the local and state level, it is important to enlist that support in your coalitions, and to consider representatives as potential experts.
• AARP: We had a very productive meeting with AARP while in DC. We believe that each of you should contact your local AARP leader and involve her/him in your project locally. There is support from national on this plan which we hope will be formalized shortly. Having AARP on our side, as they were with ATSH, is great.
• Portland, OR, Trenton, NJ, Philadelphia, PA and Charleston, SC: We would like to initiate THMs in these locales and have begun discussions.
• ATSH2: NAHU, the National Association of Healthcare Underwriters has made a commitment of $20,000 towards the development of ATSH2, our sequel. They hope to be able to identify an underwriter(s) who will fully fund the follow-up program of two hours for national PBS broadcast in 2005. We are ever hopeful as this will maintain our presence before the national audience with these issues and our encouragement of empowerment through education. If any of you can help to identify a national funder for the sequel, you enter the bonus round!!
• National Funder for THMs: Next week, we will have a telephone meeting with another insurance company that has expressed strong interest in being a part of the regional and national THMs.
• Rosalynn Carter Institute: I will be having a conversation with Ronda Talley, Executive Director, to explore ways in which we might coordinate our efforts through the Town Hall Meetings and other projects. Though Ronda was instrumental in securing Mrs. Carter's commitment to write the foreword for the ATSH companion book, we had never met until San Diego last week.
• Kettering Foundation: We had good discussions with them in DC and with NIFI (National Issues Forum Institute) which might be interested in helping to stage some of the THMs or to raise interest prior to our broadcast in some cities. They might also help to conduct outreach in the cities. They have extensive connections across the country in colleges and universities.
• PBS expressed interest in our plans for the THMs and for the national one in Fall 2004. We have more discussions with them.
• Consumer Reports: Trudy Lieberman continues to assemble information that will enable her to "rate the states" as to their caregiving performances, in categories and with criteria she is devising. Consumer Reports is preparing a plan for us to detail how they will conduct their ratings, based on what kinds o research. We will not be able to use this component in the first Kansas City production; it will not be ready.
• ATSH as a Pledge Special: Oregon Public Broadcasting has alerted all PBS stations of WGBH's intent to use the original program as a pledge special for this August. They would offer our two principal products: the DVD and the companion book to new members of PBS stations locally.
• The companion book: Rodale is publishing the paperback version at $15.95, to be in stores by end of August.
• New videos: We have now produced 12 additional films after completing ATSH. 10 of them are being distributed to professional organizations through Aquarius Productions, our distributor, at aquariusproductions.com. Two new films: Spiritual Caregiving (30 minutes) and City of Refuge: The Church of the Valley AIDS support group (60 minutes) are now available on our web site at atsh.org. We are seeking funds to broadcast City of Refuge locally and nationally through PBS. Ideas welcome. A description of it is on our web site.
• LA County's "10 Essential Caregiving Tips" (30 minutes) is our newest film now in editing, commissioned by the County through USC's Andrus School of Gerontology. It will provide a video/web site/booklet guide to services within the county and could be a template for other cities/regions. If you know of a need in your local area, please let us know and we will follow up.
• "GreenHouse Project": I will be filming from June 4-10 in Tupelo with Dr. Bill Thomas, founder of the Eden Alternative, and Jude Rabig, Executive Director of the GreenHouse Project. The film will document the first transfer of Elders into the very first built-from-the-ground-up eldercare homes, created by Dr. Bill Thomas. The new facility that will "transform the face of eldercare.

Thank you for all of your help and support.