RESULTS 2022 Grassroots Board Elections
Voting Extended to 11:59pm EST on Monday, July 11!
Dear active RESULTS Grassroots Partners,
We are writing to offer you the opportunity to vote for one of your fellow RESULTS volunteers to represent the grassroots volunteers on the boards of RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund. This is a very important decision and we have great candidates.
We need your vote!
RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund are looking to fill ONE grassroots board position to serve a term of three (3) years beginning in August 2022. (There are four grassroots board seats in total.) Grassroots Board Members represent the volunteer body on the Board of Directors and on the Executive Committee of the Board. It is the responsibility of the Board of Directors to work with the Executive Director in shaping the direction of RESULTS, advising on major policies for the organization, and providing fiduciary oversight. The Executive Committee of the Board is the primary governing body of the organization. Members meet frequently by conference call and are in communication via e-mail and telephone calls. Members must be able to participate at this level and are expected to chair or serve on a Board Committee(s) as well as participate in fundraising for the organization. Grassroots board members play a particular role in representing grassroots perspectives on the board.
Thank you to all who nominated dedicated volunteers as candidates to serve on the board—your nomination was recognition of their commitment and leadership skills. And thanks to the nominees who agreed to be considered. We’re honored!
Find our grassroots board candidate videos and bios below:
- Bill Cosgrove, MD (Salt Lake City, UT Group)
- Lynne Patalano (Riverside/San Bernardino CA Group)
- Jo Reece MD FACP FAAP (West Virginia University Group)
You may vote for one candidate. Voting Extended to 11:59pm EST on Monday, July 11! Check out each candidate below to view their online video statements and bios.
Click here to cast your vote
Bill Cosgrove, MD (Salt Lake City, UT Group)
I retired in 2017 after 34 years of pediatric practice, and I continue to serve patients one half day each week at a free clinic. For over 30 years I have been Utah’s leading advocate for immunizing children and currently serve on four immunization committees and I am directing a 3-state quality improvement project to improve pediatricians’ vaccine communication skills. Throughout my career, I have been an active member of the Utah Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and currently serve as immediate past-president, legislative chair, and chapter champion for Early Childhood issues and for Immunizations. I am active in public health advocacy work including currently serving on the Salt Lake County Board of Health, the Utah Medicaid Medical Care Advisory Committee, the Governor’s council on Early Childhood Utah, the Utah Maternal Mental Health Collaborative, the Utah Association for Infant Mental Health, and the Trauma-Resiliency Collaborative, which deals with Adverse Childhood Experiences and their life-long effects.
My advocacy experience includes local visits and trips to Washington to lobby congress for the AAP and for RESULTS, and daily attendance at the Utah Legislature’s general session, whereas a self-appointed watchdog for children I testified on many issues, and individually lobbied over 30 legislators. I participate in both the Domestic and Global group activities in Salt Lake City and serve as the Global group leader. I have had many letters to the editor and opinion pieces published in Utah papers.
I have one guiding credo: If it is good for children and their families, it is good… and worth fighting for.
Statement of Intent:
As a pediatrician, I have spent 34 years daily working to improve the lives of children, one child at a time. As an advocate, I have worked, and continue to work, to improve the lives of the entire community of children and their families. Both the individual focus and the public health perspective require a long-range view based on careful planning, patience, hope, and a commitment to continually readjusting the course.
If given the opportunity to serve on the RESULTS Board, I will bring a pediatrician’s knowledge and perspective to the many difficult issues facing the world’s children and their families. I have attended over a thousand high-risk births and thus have a first-hand understanding of the great opportunities we have to protect each child and his mother in those first dangerous moments after birth. I bring a career-long focus on prevention: preventing illness by vaccines, preventing injury by identifying and mitigating risks, and approaching every challenge by considering up-stream causes.
Over the last decade I have come to understand, use, and teach the science of Adverse Childhood Experiences. This body of research demonstrates that the emotional life of a child directly affects the rest of his life for good or ill. Emotional trauma can affect the subsequent physical, emotional, social, economic, and mental health of the individual. This realization that adult emotional responses are altered, and in some ways severely limited, by the child’s emotional history, helps to bring a deeper understanding of our own responses and the responses of those we seek to help, and even helps to understand the responses of those in power.
I have been the beneficiary of a life of luck and privilege. Every child deserves to be given what I have been given: nurturing, protection, safe food and water, education, and especially hope. I would like to bring my perspective and my advocacy to helping the world’s children and families by serving on the Grassroots Board of RESULTS.
-Dr. Bill Cosgrove
Lynne Patalano (Riverside/San Bernardino CA Group)
I’m Lynne Patalano, in Beaumont, CA. As a little kid in Cleveland, Ohio, it seemed obvious that the race riots, downtown, were caused by poverty and racial oppression. In college, a presidential political rally made me sob in frustration at corny speeches which avoided real policy issues. So, in 1983, RESULTS resonated immediately with my secret, lifelong desires to fix politics and to end poverty and oppression. In 1985, I founded a RESULTS chapter for San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Since then, our group has lobbied three to six local Reps. every single year. My group hosted meetings, radio interviews, events with authors, public forums, fundraisers, and press conferences, and regional conferences, while I taught public elementary school and raised four children with my husband. I made sure my family, students, and fellow teachers contacted and met their Congressional Representatives. Now I’m retired, widowed, and have six grandchildren. I plan to continue to keep RESULTS’ work at the center of my life.
Statement of Intent:
I am a RESULTS Group Leader and a Regional Coordinator. My intention as a candidate for the Grassroots Board of RESULTS is to support and amplify the work of volunteers to be increasingly powerful advocates.
Through my 36 years of participation in RESULTS, I’ve seen the persistent struggles to build our groups, and to grow our influence in local Congressional districts. To me, group building is essential, because the group support and those relationships make our voices more courageous. RESULTS staff train us brilliantly on policy solutions, legislation to end poverty, and on tactics to impact Congress. Yet volunteers also need support to become powerful catalysts within our local communities. Involving other people in our work is often the hardest, scariest, and most demanding challenge. It takes practice in safe settings, among trusted allies. Respectful volunteer-to-volunteer relationships provide the practice which increases our power. After pandemic shutdowns, we need more training in establishing supportive, effective groups.
For forty years we’ve suspected that resources and solutions do exist to end hunger and poverty, and that the breakthroughs needed depend on Political Will. Now there is no doubt that’s true. We know access to resources and solutions are mostly limited by systems of social oppression. We know perceived public demand (or lack of it) impacts the actions that political leaders will actually take. More than ever, we need to empower volunteers to become very creative. We now have data, evidence, precedents, and increasing systems of information and communication. RESULTS can open up ways for volunteers to share their experiences and ideas in virtual gatherings, anti-oppression workshops, and regional conferences. I intend for the Board to focus on getting volunteers the support and coaching they will need to broaden their impact on public demand for the end of poverty.
– Lynne Patalano
Jo Reece MD FACP FAAP (RESULTS WV Group)
My name is Jo Reece, and I am an associate professor at West Virginia University School of Medicine where I work as an internist and pediatrician both in my home state of WV as well as globally. I’m a founding member of RESULTS WV, initially joining with a focus on global poverty and health to advocate for the patients I encounter in my work overseas as a global health physician. I quickly though became passionate about domestic issues as well, knowing that poverty is the greatest social determinant of health. I became an advocate because I wanted to make a bigger difference in my patients’ lives in Appalachia and globally beyond just the individual level of a doctor-patient relationship by fighting for policy change. Since joining RESULTS, I’ve been a group leader and contact lead for our representatives in Congress. I’ve also written media pieces ranging from global education to housing needs to the Child Tax Credit. I’ve had the pleasure of being on the Hill for lobby day as well as recently participating in the Global Fund Replenishment Advocacy Day in April 2022. I enjoy recruiting and mentoring new members as well as encouraging and supporting current volunteers in their efforts by joining them in their meetings with Congressional leaders, editing their op-eds/LTEs, and sharing their accomplishments and messages through social media. I am proud to be a part of such a great grassroots movement that not only advocates to end poverty but is also devoted to recognizing and combatting oppression in all forms.
Statement of Intent:
Please accept my nomination to serve on the RESULTS/RESULTS Educational Fund Board of Directors as a Grassroots Board Member. It would be an honor to serve as a resource for our passionate grassroots volunteers while also using my experiences as a rural and global health physician to advise the Board on our crucial policy issues.
My career as an internist and pediatrician, along with growing up poor in southern West Virginia, has fostered my passion to fight the devastating impact poverty has on health, not just physical, but overall well-being. Each year, I split my time between serving my fellow West Virginians and spending two months overseas in sub-Saharan Africa. Our domestic and global policy issues are ones I encounter on a daily basis in the lives of my patients. I became a founding member of RESULTS WV to advocate for them on a bigger scale at the legislative level.
Ideally by participating on the Board, I would not only be able to serve as an asset to the Board but more importantly a guide for my fellow volunteers whether educating or sharing experiences related to key policy issues or validating their concerns to the Board. Every one of us has unique skills and experiences to aid our mission in RESULTS. I also look forward to working with our grassroots network in our commitment to anti-oppression principles to sponsor volunteers and values that support those marginalized by the systemic inequalities in our society today.
-Dr. Jo Reece