The events of the past couple weeks, the shooting in Arizona, the political turmoil in Tunisia and Egypt, and even the court battles in Chicago have got me thinking a bit about access to power. I’ve chosen this phrase deliberately. At my job, we have an ‘access to care’ team that helps people get access to health care. (There is even a website for people in Connecticut to help them find out if they Qualify for Health Care). To address problems that people are having, they need to know more about the access they have to health care, as well as to people in power. One story I recently heard was of a man who was down on his luck and had an untreated medical condition. The access to care team helped him get the care he needed and his life has turned around.

While there are few things as basic as our health, a ran into a more striking story recently. I met a person who was showing me pictures of his family. There he was, with his family, together with Governor Malloy, Senator Blumenthal, his Congressman, and various other elected officials. He beamed as he talked about his kids talking with our leaders.

Now, I most admit, I take this sort of stuff for granted. I’ve worked in politics. I know many of our elected officials on a first name basis. My wife and I have received unsolicited personal calls from noted politicians asking our thoughts on various issues. It is how American Democracy is supposed to work.

Later, I learned that the man I was speaking with, however, was not originally from this country. He fled to America after his parents were killed in his native country. It put a whole new perspective on access to power.

In a few weeks, we will be having special elections here in Connecticut. My wife works for Common Cause and is always looking for places to do voter registration drives. I suggested doing a voter registration drive at some of the community health centers around Connecticut. The National Association of Community Health Centers, NACHC, has this campaign to get community health centers to do voter registration. I suspect this may be looked at more from an advocacy point of view, but I’d like to suggest that it should be looked at from a public health point of view. People who feel empowered, who feel that they have a say in the political process, are probably likely to be healthier as well.

I suggested that NACHC should partner with an organization like Common Cause to do voter registration. However, folks at NACHC think that community health centers should need special voter registration drives. Instead, voter registration should be a natural part of the community health center experience. It should be as natural to ask a new patient if they are registered, as it is to ask about their insurance. Voter registration forms should be available at all community health centers, the same way they should be at every department of motor vehicles.

Yet this takes me back to the comparison between access to care and access to power. Providing forms is not enough. We need to help people understand if they are qualified to vote, and help them with any questions they have filling out the forms. We need access to power teams, just like we need access to care teams. Community health centers might be wise to collaborate with organizations like Common Cause since access to power teams is more of a core competency of groups like Common Cause than it is of health centers.

We have plenty of issues with health care in our country, but for many access to power isn’t one of them. In defending the American way of life, we should all be working together on simple ways of improving access to power for those who have limited access.