September 11, 2008

Dear Partners,

We wanted to update you on some exciting developments here at the Alliance and to fill you in on the latest news about SCHIP.

SCHIP
The New York Times reported this past Monday that Congress has decided not to hold another vote on SCHIP reauthorization this fall, as originally planned. House members decided not to go through with the vote on SCHIP reauthorization after concluding that President Bush would again veto this legislation and that they would be unable to come up with the votes needed to override the veto. In both October 2007 and January 2008, the House failed to secure a veto-proof two-thirds majority vote on SCHIP and the legislation failed to pass.

New Website
NEACH has a new website with an updated look and a more user-friendly format. Please visit www.childrenshealthne.org to see the new site, which features an updated section on SCHIP news and resources, information on our new Pediatric Quality of Care and Business Outreach projects, and a complete inventory of our archived Alerts.

Candidate Questionnaire
In another exciting piece of news, the Alliance is currently working on a candidate questionnaire on children's issues to send to all 2008 New England Congressional candidates. In an effort to help voters in our region learn about the candidates and what they stand for, the Alliance has partnered with organizations in each New England state to write questions that deal with topics important to each state's residents. Candidates' biographies and responses will be posted on an online Voter's Guide, which will be accessible through our new website and distributed widely throughout New England in mid-October.

ACTION STEP:
After the questionnaire responses have been posted on our Voter's Guide webpage, we hope that all of you can play a role in disseminating the questionnaire results. We're asking organizations with distribution lists to send out a link to the Voter's Guide to as many of your members and partner organizations as possible. If you are able to use your distribution lists to help with this effort, please contact Maia Fedyszyn at 617-275-2871 or mfedyszyn@communitycatalyst.org. She will be reaching out to Alliance partners in the coming weeks for help with dissemination.

We will keep you updated on the continued effort to reauthorize and expand SCHIP. Thank you for your continued support and advocacy.

Sincerely,

Amy Rosenthal
Project Director