TB controllers Hill-bound, hoping for Congress’ ear
Making a case for funds — without asking
As many as a dozen TB controllers are expected to hop on a chartered bus and spend the afternoon of June 17 pleading their case with members of Congress. Lobby Day, as it’s being called, will kick off this year’s annual TB controllers’ meeting, which is scheduled for June 18-21 in downtown Baltimore.
"Even though TB controllers can’t lobby for funding, they can speak powerfully about the impact of TB on the ground," says Joanne Carter, legislative director of Results International, the grass-roots lobbying organization that has adopted TB as its cause. Carter is scheduled to spend an hour or so coaching the TB controllers who plan to go to the Capitol on how best to make their case. Because they already receive federal funding, TB controllers can’t ask outright for more money. They can, however, "educate" lawmakers about the need for sustained support for their programs, Carter adds.
Along with Carter, speakers for Lobby Day are expected to include John Garrison, CEO of the American Lung Association (ALA); Dale Dirks, the ALA’s counsel on health and medicine; Philip Hopewell, MD, professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco; and Rep. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, the principal sponsor of a bill recently introduced in the House that would allocate the funding needed to get the United States on the path to TB elimination.
Hopewell is expected to talk about the Institute of Medicine report released last year that delineated what steps need to be taken before the United States can attain TB elimination (defined as less than one case per million persons per year, or about 300 cases nationwide per year). Brown is the scheduled lunchtime speaker.
Making TB relevant is usually a good way to engage the listener’s attention, says Carol Pozsik, RN, MPH, state TB controller in South Carolina, who plans to be working the halls on Lobby Day. "Whenever we get a congressional inquiry, I’ll ask where the person is from," she says. "If they reply Boiling Springs, I’ll let them know how much TB we’ve got there. That usually gets them hooked." Pozsik says she also plans to make points about the global TB epidemic, as well as the dramatic shift toward foreign-born TB with which many of her colleagues are now contending.
The lobbyists may actually be talking to staff members instead of actual Congresspeople, partly because Senators and Representatives often spend the weekend with constituents and return to work sometime on Monday. Moving meetings toward the end of the week, when lawmakers would be more likely to be in, wasn’t feasible, says Walter Page, executive director of the Atlanta-based National TB Controllers Association.
Baltimore was chosen as the venue for this year’s meeting because it was close to the Capitol yet still affordable, Page adds. "It’s hard this time of year to find a place in [Washington] that takes federal room rates," he says. "It’s tourist season there now, and they can get $200 a night without any problem. You ask em if you can book 300 rooms at $109 a night [the federal rate], and they tell you no thanks." The ALA will provide the bus that will take the lobbyists to the Capitol.
More TB controllers might have signed up for the lobbying trip if the schedule had been sent out sooner, but problems on the ALA end resulted in a delay.
Whether or not it comes up in conversation with Congress members, some TB controllers and ALA policy experts are still fretting over the White House budget for fiscal year 2001.
The president’s budget proposes level funding for TB. Language in section 214, page 480, also specifies a "20% block grant" for TB control activities, suggesting that at least some federal TB money will be block-granted. Insiders at the ALA say policy analysts there, as well as the CDC, are still uncertain about what, exactly, all this might mean. According to one insider, the best hope for now is that ALA’s "friends" in Congress can help see to it that level funding and block-granting language can be, "if not killed outright, at least softened."
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content