This week, 50 ATS members and patient advocates traveled to Capitol Hill to advocate for key ATS legislative priorities. ATS and ATS Public Advisory Roundtable (PAR) members came from 26 states across the country, including Alabama, California, Hawaii, South Dakota, South Carolina and West Virginia, to meet with 80 House and Senate offices. ATS members met with key members of Congress such as Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN), as well as Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), chair of the House Labor-Health and Human Services Appropriations subcommittee, which determines NIH funding.
“The ATS Hill Day is an exciting event for clinicians and researchers to partner with our patient groups and directly engage with our members of Congress to discuss ATS’s legislative priorities, including the need to increase NIH funding, support TB elimination, raise awareness of COPD and improve patient access to supplemental oxygen,” ATS President Polly Parsons, MD said. She continued, “Hill Day meetings are a unique experience that help us to understand how federal policy is made, establish relationships with our legislators, and advance respiratory health.”
Left to Right: Mario Perez, M.D., John Cox, M.D., ATS Secretary-Treasurer Lynn Schnapp, M.D., Anne Mainardi, M.D., Margaret Pisani, M.D., Stephen Baldassari, M.D., Alice Boylan, M.D.
Left to Right: Steve Kirtland, M.D., Gary Ewart, ATS President Polly Parsons, M.D., Virginia Spitzer, Erik Swenson, M.D.
