Historic Opportunity To Explicitly Include Substance Abuse Prevention in Healthcare Reform

Leadership development empowering youth to lead drug-free lives. Historic Opportunity To Explicitly Include Substance Abuse Prevention in Healthcare Reform Prevention Included In Healthcare Reform Leg Historic Opportunity To Explicitly Include Substance Abuse Prevention in Healthcare Reform December 3, 2009   Background   The substance abuse prevention field has a historic opportunity to weigh in with Congress to help ensure our field is eligible to compete for billions of dollars from the funds contained in the healthcare reform bills currently being debated.   Both the House and Senate versions of healthcare reform contain several funds, which authorize billions of dollars for various prevention funding. However, unless the final healthcare reform bill contains language that: 1) explicitly includes substance abuse prevention in the definition of community based prevention; and 2) explicitly includes substance use disorders as part of the definition of chronic disease, condition or illness, our field will not be eligible to compete for these funds.   Members of Congress are currently being bombarded with faxes and phone calls from every other "disease interest" organization. Therefore, if we want to ensure that substance abuse prevention is explicitly included in the final version of healthcare reform, it is critical that the field respond to this alert en masse.   WHAT YOU CAN DO   Fax the members of your congressional delegation.   TIMING   The Senate is currently debating its version of healthcare reform on the Senate Floor. After the Senate passes its version, the next step will be for the House and Senate to conference their respective versions of the legislation. Please fax your members of Congress immediately to ask them to explicitly include substance abuse prevention in the definition of community based prevention, and substance use disorder in the definition of chronic disease, condition or illness.   CADCA's fax system allows you to automatically fax CADCA's sample letter on this issue to your legislators from its website. To send faxes to your legislators, go to http://capwiz.com/cadca/home/.   If you would like to personalize your letter with examples from your state/community, please email dkurosky@cadca.org for a MS Word version of the sample letter.       Mary Jo Davies, CSADP, CPPE External Program Manager Operation Snowball, Inc. Illinois Alcoholism & Drug Dependence Association 937 South Second Street Springfield, IL 62704 217.528.7335 x. 18 mdavies@iadda.org www.os-iti.org www.iadda.org         Email Marketing by Operation Snowball & the Illinois Alcoholism & Drug Dependence Association | 937 South Second Street | Springfield | IL | 62704