Tobacco Public Health Groups

American Heart Association Fighting Heart Disease and Stroke m e m o grops ACTION REQUESTED BY MAY 9, 1998 April 17, 1998 100 op-eds editorials Tageted To: Affiliate Executive Vice Presidents AffiliateAdvocacy Directors/Vice Presidents Media event needs news hook districts AffiliateCommunications Directors/Vice Presidents From: Brigid McHugh Sanner, EVP Communications & Advocacy Subject: Operation 10,000 Voices Teleconference Calls We have scheduled a series of tobacco-issue teleconferences for two purposes: 1. To update volunteers and staff on current tobacco developments; 2. To mobilize a corps of 1,000 volunteers and staff to contact 10 colleagues, and to get a commitment from them to contact their senators or congressperson and urge support of comprehensive tobacco legislation. The goal of this initiative, Operation 10,000 Voices, is to generate 10,000 personal contacts with Congress between now and mid-May. Please communicate with your community-based volunteers and staff and encourage their participation in these calls. We have scheduled a variety of times (including evenings and Saturdays) to accommodate people's schedules. Success of Operation 10,000 Voices hinges on active grassroots involvement. Our goal is to have a minimum of 20 people from every state involved with this initiative. We encourage you to get started now in recruiting call participants. We feel it is critical to emphasize the need for comprehensive sustainable, effective, well-funded, bipartisan legislation aimed at tobacco control. During these calls, we will brief participants on the McCain bill, current ENACT activity, AHA actions, as well as answering questions. The first series of 10 calls are scheduled for the following dates and times. Based on participation, we will schedule a second series of calls, but we encourage you to communicate information about the calls already scheduled and recruit participation from your volunteers. Please note all calls are referenced in Central Time. Please adjust to your local time zone. We expect calls will last 45 minutes to one hour.