Kelleen Marek's Blog Post #1

This weekend I attended Families USA’s Annual Health Action Conference. I currently serve as the Operations intern for the health care advocacy organization and this is the second Health Action conference I’ve attended. The conference was at the Hyatt Regency at Capitol Hill and took place for February 4th through the 7th. The conference targets Health Care policy “wonks” and provides very high-level information. Although I don’t fall in their target market, I am now familiar with enough of the terms and general ideas to follow along with the presenters and workshop sessions.

The registration was well handled and took less than a minute. I then entered the general session to see the first speakers of the day. The room was packed because there were almost 100 more attendees than in the past few years. I waited near the back, so other guests could take the seats and watched as both the US Surgeon General, Vice Admiral Vivek H Murthy and the President of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards give opening remarks (a picture of them chatting is pictured to the right, courtesy of Families USA). Cecile Richards’ speech was definitely a highlight of the event for me.

We separated into breakout sessions and I attended sessions on improving engagement among health care enrollment assisters and incorporating value based care methods into health care coverage. I won’t bore you with the details of advanced healthcare advocacy information, but sessions were informative and interesting.

Families USA has been trying to reach out to a younger audience and had a workshop for Emerging Professionals, which are defined as health care workers with 5 years or less of experience. There was also an after hours reception for the emerging professionals. A few other initiatives to reach out to the younger crowd included the photo booth that was new to the conference this year and an integrated social media campaign that used Twitter and Facebook.

The conference was educational and fun. Everything from the food to the workshops were planned out well and the only thing left to do is analyze the conference evaluations. So far, feedback is looking good!

(Our staff after the conference)