I spoke at an event earlier this week where the moderator asked how AcademyHealth and other nonprofits on the panel balanced being non-partisan in a time when health research and science is increasingly seen through a partisan lens. It was a timely question given the recent news that the CDC has added misleading information to its website about a possible link between vaccines and autism.
Does calling the CDC addition ‘misleading’ make AcademyHealth partisan? No. The evidence is abundantly clear on this point. Might someone who disagrees see it differently? Certainly.
How do we thread that needle? Like we often do, I based my answer in our mission and values.
AcademyHealth exists to support the generation and use of evidence to improve health and health care for all.
To advance our mission, the advocacy team has a two-fold charge:
- To secure the infrastructure necessary to support robust, high-quality research and data that can be used to inform decision making, and
- To educate policymakers about currently available evidence and what the evidence tells us about different policy options and the way those options may or may not achieve their goals.
Recently, our work to secure the infrastructure – data, workforce, funding and academic freedom – has been robust, disruptive, and increasingly necessary. We’ve taken aggressive action to restore access to data removed from federal websites, campaigned for continued funding for science research at AHRQ and elsewhere, documented the ways appropriated funds have been impounded, and sounded the alarm when important, non-partisan boards like ACIP and the USPSTF were at risk. These are not partisan actions, they are mission and values driven imperatives. If we don’t stand up for the data, for sustained funding for the field, and for reliance on non-partisan, science-based decision-making functions, who will? Without that data, public and population health is at risk. People’s lives are quite literally on the line. We are called to act.
We do this work with equal vigor, regardless of which party is in power.
When the Biden Administration announced a new data access policy and fee structure that would dramatically limit access to critical data from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in early 2024, AcademyHealth acted quickly on behalf of the field. We mobilized a coalition of parties and drafted a letter to CMS outlining the potential harms of this policy and suggesting pathways forward; we spread the word among our members and constituents, conducted direct outreach to the Administration, and reached out to the press. The campaign got real traction, and the Administration responded. It was an important moment for the field, and for AcademyHealth, to step up.
Similarly, when the Trump Administration removed critical data from public websites earlier this year, we once again stepped forward. This time, when the Administration failed to act, we joined peer organizations in legal action to force the restoration of the data sets. This summer, we settled that case and won, and critical data is once again available for researchers and practitioners.
The educational aspects of our mission - bringing evidence to bear to inform policy decisions - require us to build trusted relationships with policymakers on both sides of the aisle. The perception of bias can make those relationships harder to land, and trickier to maintain. But perception isn’t reality. Our advocacy team held more than 80 meetings about Medicaid policy this year, with offices from both parties. We regularly engage majority and minority staff on the relevant appropriations committees in important and fruitful conversations about research funding, and we work with individual offices to help explain complex health policy questions and the data behind them.
We cannot and will not succeed in our mission if we fail to engage in a nonpartisan manner, building relationships across areas of agreement and disagreement in service of evidence informed decision-making. It is not easy, but it is necessary.
As we get closer to Giving Tuesday, we are asking for donations to sustain this important work. Effective advocacy takes time and resources, and your donation helps ensure that AcademyHealth remains a reliable and resilient voice for the field.