Advocacy

Members of Congress will return to Washington on Monday after a two week April recess. While recess typically means quieter times on the advocacy front, the work in Washington continues.

As we continue to recognize health services research’s increasingly relevant place in the world of Washington, I wanted to begin weekly advocacy updates for our members – to let you know what we’re hearing and to provide you with our “read” on the state of affairs.

Having now seen the president’s budget proposals for fiscal year 2017 and 2018, AcademyHealth remains highly troubled about what they mean for public health and health research.

AcademyHealth is deeply troubled by the president’s budget and the signal it sends to the nation’s scientific enterprise.

One of my greatest privileges as president and CEO of AcademyHealth is the opportunity to represent you, our members – who are making strides each day to help us better understand and improve our health care system – in visits with members of Congress and congressional staff. It is an honor to speak about how health services research is revolutionizing the way we see and respond to health care challenges and opportunities, and I am constantly energized by the promise and impact of your work.

Lisa Simpson, AcademyHealth President and CEO, opened the 2017 AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference with the following remarks, focused on how the health care and health policy community can positively contribute to the development of sound policy in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.

Last year – as part of our ongoing charge to ensure health services research is accounted for in federal policy – AcademyHealth submitted several comments to federal policymakers -- among them were responses to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects and the NPRM on the Confidentiality of Substance Use Disorder Patient Records from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. This year we’ve seen final rules on both these subjects released.

Day in and day out, AcademyHealth works to ensure that the best evidence – evidence from our members and other bright minds working throughout health services and policy research – is used to inform policy and practice. Our advocacy efforts are core to that mission.

As we head into inauguration day and prepare for a new administration to enter the White House, we hold firm in our principle that policies affecting health and performance of the health system should be informed by the best and most relevant evidence.