The CNH Activist’s Handbook

Start a CNH Grassroots Network in Your State

When it comes to grassroots lobbying, there is tremendous strength in numbers. CNH, with 2,500 members, has built a reputation for professional natural health representation and for influencing natural health legislation.

Grassroots lobbying is an organized effort by CNH to influence the outcome of state-by-state legislation. CNH state representatives actively help legislation and legislators.

Grassroots participation by natural health professionals and consumers is key in shaping natural health reform efforts and protecting the status of natural health modalities. As a natural health professional, your contacts as a CNH activist provide valuable insight into the philosophy and cost-effectiveness of natural health that your state legislators may have never considered due to the "conditioning effect" of viewpoints espoused for years by medical lobbyists.

Get involved.

Join with other natural health professionals and increase your effect on health legislation.

Recruit.

Build the legislative participation in your state by aggressively asking professional, capable and interested natural health activists to join the CNH grassroots network. CNH will supply your group with the majority of tools to do so.

Develop a CNH Phone Tree

(Don’t laugh... many powerful organizations use this method quite successfully, and are able to mobilize thousands of members in one afternoon.)

When an important natural health vote, hearing or election is scheduled in your state, CNH immediately contacts its membership with faxes, e-mail and mailed alerts. In time-sensitive situations—when there is not enough time for mail—you can help initiate legislative contact.

As the first in your state to be contacted, spread the word and mobilize natural health activists in your area by establishing a phone tree.

Maximize Your Effectiveness

Identify the names and numbers of five customers and five business colleagues. Have those 10 people obtain the names and phone numbers of five to ten other people.

Utilize a CNH “Phone Tree Alert Form” to convey pertinent information. Such a form will ensure that your message is uniform, and will give each member of your phone tree sufficient information on the legislation and vote.

Be brief. Each call should last no longer than two minutes. In these time-sensitive situations, it’s imperative that all contacts are made quickly to ensure that the alert is delivered throughout the natural health community. Using the Alert Form, deliver the message and move on to your next call. If one of the contacts on your list wants to discuss the matter at length, do so only after all your calls are completed. Remember, time is of the essence.

Always work to expand the number of people on your phone tree. The goal of a phone tree is to mobilize as many people as possible in a very short time.

Become a CNH State Representative

How strong is your interpersonal network—regarding peer relationships, professional organizations, and access to public officials? How high is your own motivation to keep natural health in the public domain? How well-attuned is your perceptual “antenna” to the legislative landscape as well as public opinion concerning this important issue? Can you usually see (and stay focused on) The Big Picture, regarding alternative health policy issues? Are you persuasive?

As a national professional trade organization whose membership is growing nation wide, CNH provides powerful state-specific lobbying expertise, exhaustive research and monitoring of legislation, plus fast communication of time-sensitive information, and a hands-on presence when the natural health community of any individual state enters the legislative boxing ring.

We’re looking for a few good representatives—namely, one CNH member per state—to volunteer as “lead jeep.” That means that you inform the CNH staff of nuances unique to your state, that you provide a presence if appropriate through speaking engagements and/or your day-to-day informal interactions with concerned individuals, that you serve as eyes and ears for natural health advocacy. At present, no organization or resource exists that tracks the state-by-state progress of natural healthcare and the incorporation of common sense reform measures. It’s a big job, but an important one.

If the threat of monopolistic licensing poses a tangible risk to your profession, if you’re a political animal who can ferret out and communicate important information, if you have keen vision to understand the consequences, good and bad, of emerging healthcare issues and if you’re effective at motivating and delegating, CNH asks you to consider becoming a state representative for The Coalition of Natural Health. Although the nuances of this important role may vary somewhat state by state, CNH has had great success with the “one-two punch” of meshing our national strength with local members’ savvy, network and presence. If interested, please contact CNH. If you’re the kind of leader who'd like to find someone else like yourself in charge, think of it as taking a personal stake in your professional future.