I was told by some state health officer today to ... have better luck with others states when I asked for data! I guess, things are getting beyond the comfort zone. The tone used was quite defensive and maybe even insulting.
Not a shock. From my limited time in county government and dealing with the state government yes, you will hit road blocks. You are pointing something out that they did not do, but could have and should have. At the end of this path I see a root cause being identified and hopefully corrected. But along the path will be some really ugly lawsuits. You have lit the fuse that they are going to get hurt out of. Unless they thank you profusely and start action NOW.
You are so on the side of right you really need to turn up your volume. Please look at
www.ted.com my second favorite place to hang out on the Internet. You have a great story to tell and that would be one place to do it.
Current.com is another place you must go. What really needs to happen is to get some students to produce two or three different videos for you. The first is the story of what you did, why you did it, the problems you had and the outcome. Perhaps ten to fourteen minutes in length. This is what you send into Current. Second is basically an edit of the first cutting it down to three minutes, just the highlights. This one goes on YouTube.com and points them to a website of yours and/or to Current for more info. Third is you giving the full boat presentation, this one is optional as you are giving away the milk (read giving it away for free).
You need to have a website that covers the info in the first video but without to much detail just now. This is where you sell the talks and perhaps the opertunity for you to train people in what you've done and perhaps how to do it.
From a grant perspective you really need to get in front of NIH or CDC. Another option is to contact the state governments and ask them for a grant and access to their data so that you can work for each state. Every state should want to fund you ASAP to get this done. If they say no then you have some interesting information for the next election for their opponent.
Another option is Oprah. This is big enough that I can reach out to an woman I've met a few times who is a producer for her. Your story is of that magnitude. You need to work through how you want to approach this to make sure as much good is done as possible but your time is reasonably covered.
This brings up such an interesting thing especially now with open source and geeks getting together to do stuff for the world. There was a group who met the weekend after Haiti to pull together some programs to help with the effort here in Chicago. Your effort brings up some interesting stuff that groups could go out and do for states or people.
While I like the NIH approach, I think Al Gore (who created CurrentTV) or Oprah would be better channels to get both the word out as well as some potential funding. I could see Oprah funding this for a much wider space. Obama might be an option as it shows the power of a standard approach to maintaining health data.
Another option is WebMD. I had a friend at the AMA some years back who talked about what a good job WebMD was doing as a source for the general public and it was something they wanted to do. This might be another great place to get the world out.
Yet another option would be the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They are into health big time, really big time.
If you would like my help on turning up the volume on this I would be happy to. Drop me a PM with your phone number time(s) that work for you and I will call you this weekend. The only major task I have to do this weekend is some electrical work in the two rooms I did major changes on, taxes and look for a job. Kid out with scouts skiing and snowboarding till Monday so I've got a bit of time.
I did not say it but thanks for doing this. This is the stuff that Think Tanks used to do back in the 70s and early 80s. It's great to see it happen again.
B2 (;->
