They Came, They Saw, They Spoke!

By; Noah Hammes, CHF Staff

 

As our member organizations know, advocacy is a mission-driven field in which every story matters and every victory counts. Most professional health funding advocates spend their days tirelessly building support networks, disseminating key messaging, and working to secure federal and state dollars that could change the lives of many—through these efforts, and the close collaboration with the constituencies they represent, the work often becomes personal. However, capturing the attention and purse strings of policymakers is not an easy feat. With fiscal years often overlapping due to continuing resolutions and delayed budgets, advocates have a limited window of opportunity to meet with Congressional leaders and their staff, making testimony for Public Witness hearings a crucial tool. This year, during the FY23 Public Witness Hearing, many Coalition for Health Funding members provided either in person or written testimony to the appropriations committees. Their powerful testimony was moving and informative, showing firsthand the importance of these opportunities.

Five CHF members, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE), the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP), the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), and the American Association of Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR) were selected to provide in-person testimony to the House Labor-HHS appropriations subcommittee!

Dr. Moira Szliagyi, AAP President, discussed programs at HRSA, CDC, and NIH including loan repayment for pediatric subspecialties, firearm injury and mortality prevention research, funding for the National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities (NCBDDD), and funding for global immunizations. Speaking on the heels of the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Dr. Szliagyi stressed the importance of gun injury and mortality prevention. She provided impactful statistics around increases in victims of gun violence, and urged continued federal investment in gun violence research to help ensure the safety and protection of children across the country.

For CSTE, Executive Director Janet Hamilton discussed the importance of appropriating annual sustained funding for the CDC’s Data Modernization Initiative. This critical initiative is helping to modernize our public health data systems at the federal, state, and local level. The timely collection and use of accurate data is crucial in both predicting patterns of disease spread and mitigating disease risk. Janet stressed the need to preserve our local public health response and the role that state, territorial, tribal, and local health departments play in our public health data infrastructure. She also shared the Data: Elemental to Health Campaign’s estimate that the actual need for data modernization is at least 7.84 billion dollars over five years.

AMCHP’s President Belinda Pettiford asked for increases in funding for the Title V Maternal and Child Health Services Block grant, including a significant increase in funding for the state formula fund, which helps ensure state infrastructure around infant formula availability. Belinda highlighted several key initiatives resulting from these block grants and made a powerful argument for the necessary increases in funding given the level of need for services nationwide.

Dr. Cynthia McCurren with AACN discussed the importance of funding both Nursing Workforce Development Programs as laid out in Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act and the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) within the NIH. Dr McCurren emphasized how funding these initiatives improves the quality of educational resources for nursing students and the nursing workforce, as well as expands the research base within nursing schools through providing new grant funding opportunities and potential increases in funding for Personnel and infrastructure.

AADORC’s president Dr. Jane Weintraub, DDS, advocated for increased funding for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) to support key dental and craniofacial research efforts across the country. The research done at NIDCR recently culminated in the development of a 2021 report, “Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges,” which had input from over 400 contributors and documented 20 years of progress in oral health since the 2000 Surgeon General’s Report on this topic.

Outside of these powerful in-person testimonies, many CHF member organizations shared their written testimony with us, all of which are linked below:

Advocacy can be an uphill battle, and it takes all of us to ensure that key public health and health care services are funded appropriately. Public witness hearings are a crucial part of our advocacy work and we appreciate all of our members’ hard work on FY 2023 testimony!  

Noah Hammes