Wilson Miller Communications
Employer Healthcare Coalition
The Challenge
As the healthcare reform debate began to heat up in California and at the national level toward the end of 2006 and in early 2007, Wilson-Miller Communications was retained to engage large employers, including Fortune 500 companies in a business-led coalition committed to advancing market-based healthcare reform.
The vision was that this coalition would engage very substantively on the policy issues and bring the experience and knowledge of the employer community to the healthcare reform public policymaking table.
The Wilson-Miller Approach
We knew that as this debate developed myriad of coalitions advocating for different types of reform would come into existence. We also knew that if we were able to successfully build an influential coalition the membership, our unifying policy principles and our public profile were critical components.
The Wilson-Miller Solution
Working with key founding members of the coalition, we first developed a set of five key unifying principles around which this coalition was built. From that point forward, our team worked to recruit more than 35 members prior to our public launch. We successfully worked to launch he coalition both in Washington, D.C. and California, drawing key lawmakers to our launch press conferences to stand shoulder to shoulder with member CEOs in calling for comprehensive healthcare reform. Following this launch, Wilson-Miller Communications worked with coalition members to establish the coalition with the media and key stakeholders through earned and paid media efforts, the web site and communication with key decision makers. Since the successful launch of this coalition, it has become a key player in healthcare reform discussions in Sacramento and on Capitol Hill and is on the path to becoming the most influential business healthcare coalition in the nation.