Report from the 2009 Archimedes Movement Conference

Conference Wrap-up

We're still trying to catch our breath after our 2009 Archimedes Movement Conference last Friday, but we wanted to give you a quick recap.

Back in the spring of 2008 we held our first conference at Lewis and Clark College and spent the day learning about organizing house parties and chapters, preparing for public speaking, and many more practical things to make a movement grow. This year, we wanted to get closer to one of our core messages – that this debate is not only about health insurance, but should have as its goal improving the health of all Oregonians (or, for federal reform, improving the health of all Americans).

To do that we invited our founder John Kitzhaber, MD, and Bruce Goldberg, MD, the head of the newly formed Oregon Health Authority, to set the stage and talk about what is happening – and not happening – at the federal level and here in Oregon. During lunch we had a panel of four Oregon legislators, two Democrats and two Republicans, who shared their visions of how we can continue to move health reform forward in Oregon, facilitated by University of Washington professor of Communications, David Domke PhD. (And by the way, Professor Domke will be back with his teaching partner Crispin Thurlow for an all-day workshop in Portland on Nov. 7th: Turning Values Into Political Messages: Using Value-Laden Language to Communicate about Health Reform.)

The rest of day was spent divided among twelve breakout sessions that were pulled together to share the work of some partner organizations who don't often get to be at the "health reform" table. We had planned for about 175 participants at the Salem Conference Center but instead had close to 300 attendees, with about 90 of those attending on full or partial scholarship. This year we instituted a goal that no one who wanted to attend would have the cost of registration as a barrier. It felt awesome to be able to give scholarships to all who requested them, thanks to the individuals who stepped up to create a scholarship fund and the organizations that sponsored or conference. Wow!

About 50 people took the time to give us feedback forms and we're just going through them now: lots of positive energy and creative ideas for what we should focus on next. There were some who expressed disappointment that we didn't focus more on the legislation at the federal level, but we plan on doing that at workshops throughout the fall and winter. Last Friday was a time for widening the table and talking about the many ways we must address change in order to achieve improved health and we look forward to working with each and every one of these organizations again.

Thanks to Chris Pierce, who volunteered as our photographer, you can check our pictures here, and if you're interested, watch video of both Governor Kitzhaber's and Bruce Goldberg's presentations that the Salem Statesman Journal has made available online. Many thanks to them.

Presenters who used slides during their breakout sessions have graciously allowed us to post them here. Our presenters serve as our "faculty," and delivered amazing sessions despite technical challenges, co-presenters who were ill and couldn't make it, and finding larger groups than they were planning to present to. We were honored to have such a strong faculty join us, and we hope that you enjoyed getting to hear from them.

If you didn't get to attend this year, we hope to see you next year!