Talking Points Title VII

Talking Points for a Phone Call with Your Representative:

• Please ask Representative _____________ to sign onto the Norwood-DeGette letter, which asks House appropriators to restore funding for health professions programs.
• Please ask Senator _____________ and Senator _____________ to sign onto the Roberts-Reed letter which asks Senate appropriators to restore funding for health professions programs.

• Please support funding for Section 747 the primary care cluster, at least at the FY 2005 levels of $88 million. The cluster received $41 million in FY 2006.

• A March 1, 2006 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that in 2004, CHCs were understaffed and could not fill all clinical positions (Rosenblatt, et al.).  Rural health centers had more openings that took longer to fill than those in urban areas. 

• The JAMA article also shows more than 13 percent of family physician positions at CHCs were vacant.  This is critical since primary care physicians make up nearly 90 percent of doctors working in CHCs -- and most are family physicians.

• Almost 4,000 family physicians and general practitioners were exposed to Title VII funding during medical school and subsequently chose to work in a CHC. (UCSF and Graham Center pre-publication report) Without this exposure, we would anticipate more than 750 fewer family physicians would have been working in a CHC in 2003. This would bring family physician vacancies in CHCs to over 1,300.
• Without funding for primary care training, we can expect fewer family physicians who will work in CHCs and serve in the NHS Corps, so please increase funding for a program that helps meet the President’s priorities.