Protect Our Care, a national organization that advocates for expanded health care access for all Americans, partnered with 50+1 Strategies to persuade, encourage and eventually pressure resistant members of Congress from California to vote for the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3), part of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
50+1 used a two-pronged approach to communicate our messaging, including a robust earned media campaign and creative grassroots organizing. Over the course of six months, we placed numerous op-eds in notable publications like the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Times of San Diego, garnered local television news hits, earned stories in print publications and industry-specific outlets, held press conferences both virtual and in-person, organized bus tour stops with elected officials and drug cost storytellers, flew banner planes, ran radio ads, deployed sound trucks and mobile billboards, staged die-ins, and more.
Several key provisions of H.R. 3 were placed into the president’s Inflation Reduction Act, with support from all of our legislative targets. One of the storytellers we recruited and trained was invited to the White House to a Build Back Better event with President Biden. We are continuing to work with Protect Our Care to advance the president’s health care agenda and hold Republicans accountable.