 Watch a Healthy Voices video clip Healthy Voices is a national volunteer project that is gathering videos of Americans from all over the nation expressing their views on health care. The videos, which are being gathered by college students and other volunteers, are being made available by Health Commentary during the upcoming presidential campaign as a way to focus attention on our most pressing health care issues. You can watch the videos by visiting our Healthy Voices video page . You can also see samples of the videos by scrolling to the bottom of this page. New videos will be added often in the coming year at our Healthy Voices Video Page. Volunteers must register to participate. You can sign up by contacting Anton Zuiker at healthyvoicesvideo@gmail.com. You may also sign up online; just visit our registration page. Note: Though most of our volunteers are college students, Healthy Voices is open to anyone who wants to get involved. We urge you to join us! To learn about what volunteering entails, read our Orientation Kit below. (Note: A downloadable PDF version is available.)
Healthy Voices Orientation Kit As the 2008 campaign season gets an early start, you can join in on a nationwide conversation about how health care in this country should be improved. Healthy Voices, a project of HealthCommentary.org, is an online effort to collect the diverse views of Americans, and we want to hear from you. More importantly, we want the nation’s politicians and policymakers to hear from you. We have recruited volunteers to conduct first-person interviews of citizens in communities all over the United States. This diverse video collection – from all places, races, genders, ages, socio-economic status and occupations – will inform, instruct and ignite a debate on the status of our current health care system and what should be done to improve its functioning for all of our citizens. Here's how you can participate Grab your digital video recorder, step out into your community, and interview one or more people about their thoughts on being healthy. Ask students, teachers, community leaders, store clerks, business owners, coaches and ministers. And turn the camera on yourself so we can hear what you think. If you have an Apple laptop, you can use your computer's built-in camera for taping. See our laptop instructions. We’ve provided sample questions below. Don’t get complicated – just ask each person one or two questions. We’ve also provided a simple consent form. Please ask each person you interview to sign and date this form so that we can include their views in Healthy Voices. After you’ve saved your interviews to your computer, edit them into individual files (one person per video file), upload each interview to the free video-sharing site Google Video. See the instructions below. Then, send us a link to your videos, and we’ll include it at this website. Healthy Voices Sample questions Use any of these questions, or ask a health-related question of your own: • What does it mean to be “healthy”? • Has your experience with our health care system been good or bad? What have you learned from those experiences? • Do you believe health insurance should be universal in our country – that every citizen should get free or affordable health care? • What is the appropriate role for our government in health care? Should we have a national system like Medicare for everyone? Should government do less or more to assure the safety of hospitals, medicines and food? • If there were one thing you would like to tell our future President when it comes to health care, what would it be? How to record voices from your community The goal of Healthy Voices is to record diverse views from across America. Try to follow these steps when you go out into your community to find those views: 1. Politely ask a person to participate in the Health Voices project, and explain that this is an effort to urge our leaders to address our health care system and its problems. 2. If the person agrees to participate, turn on your camera and get close enough so you can clearly see the person’s face – we’re looking for a head-and-shoulders shot. 3. Ask each person to say his or her name and where he or she lives. 4. Ask each person one or more questions about health care in America – be sure to speak your questions clearly so we can hear them in the video. 5. Keep the interview short, but be sure you get your subject to express his or her opinions and the reasoning behind those opinions. 6. Ask the person to sign the consent form, and thank each person for participating. 7. Mention that their voices will be displayed at HealthCommentary.org later this year. You can download a one-page backgrounder about Healthy Voices, make multiple copies and take them with you to hand out to anyone who wants more information as you tape your videos. Note: We have assembled four sample videos to help you get started. To watch them, please scroll to the bottom of this page. You also might want to visit Squidoo.com, which has created a good tutorial on making video for the Web. Uploading your videos to Google Video To share your videos with the Healthy Voices project, you’ll need a free account with the video sharing service at Google Video. Start at Google to create an account or log in using your Gmail account. There are two ways to get your videos onto Google Video. 1. If your video file is under 100 MB, the easiest and fastest way to upload a video is to use the Google Video web-based uploader. This allows you to view, share, and post your video instantly. 2. If your video is over 100 MB or if you'd like to upload multiple files at once, the Google Video Uploader client software is your best bet. Download and install that program from the Google Video site. To learn how to upload videos to Google, read this tutorial. For more information on Google video processing, visit this web page. And please familiarize yourself with the Google Video Upload Program Terms and Conditions. Letting us know about your video Once you have uploaded your videos, be sure to tell us about them. An easy way to do this is by clicking on the ‘Share’ button. On Google Video it’s located just to the right of the rating stars in the top left corner of the page. Use the ‘Email this page’ form. Send it to: healthyvoicesvideo@gmail.com. Don't forget to include your email address in the From text field and a short message about your video. To sign up Visit our online registration page. Help and questions Need help? Contact Anton Zuiker at healthyvoicesvideo@gmail.com. Consent Form Please ask each person you interview to sign and date the consent form, which will allow us to collect and display their views on the Healthy Voices Web site. A downloadable PDF version of the Consent Form is available. Send the consent forms to: Healthy Voices
c/o Anton Zuiker
5506 Loyal Ave.
Durham, NC 27713 Or fax the forms to (360) 361-3575. Healthy Voices Consent Form Help heal America’s health care system. I, ___________________, hereby consent that the photographs and/or motion picture, videotape, or audio recording made of my voice and image may be used by HealthCommentary.org without restriction as part of the Healthy Voices project to promote a national discussion about health care reform in America, through print, television and electronic media. Name _________________________ Date _________________ Email address___________________. Sample One  Sample Two  Sample Three  Sample Four  | 
