2018-2019 BPS Congressional Fellow Hermes Taylor-Weiner, shares a mid-year update on his experience thus far on Capitol Hill.
It’s hard to believe that I am halfway through my congressional fellowship. It has been an exciting time to be working on the Hill! My fellowship began last September with a two-week AAAS crash course in government and public policy. At the end of the month, I interviewed in congressional offices and joined the health team in the office of Senator Feinstein, representing California. It has been a dream come true to work for my home-state senator on a policy portfolio that matches and expands my interests.
Senator Feinstein has served as California’s Senator for 26 years and holds seats on several important committees. In addition to her well-known work addressing gun-violence and banning torture, the Senator has been a long-time advocate for science. She serves as co-chair of the Senate Cancer Coalition and originally authored the legislation to create the Breast Cancer Research Stamp, which has raised more than $85 million for breast cancer research. I work on the heath portfolio in the office, which includes health insurance, medical research funding and FDA regulations.
My work in the Senate office is an interesting mix of activities. Most weeks begin with a staff meeting that includes the full legislative staff and the Senator. During the meeting, we review the week’s legislative agenda, update the senator on the status of on-going projects and have the opportunity to pitch new ideas – not too different from lab meeting! These meetings have been an opportunity for me to learn about the issues outside my own policy portfolio. For the rest of the week, I am busy working on my own legislative projects, attending congressional briefings and meeting with constituent groups. Occasionally, I am asked to write briefing memos, draft letters to Federal agencies and respond to the day’s news headlines. It’s an exciting and demanding job.
One of the health team’s major accomplishments in the last few months was a bipartisan letter to the NIH asking the Institutes to investigate how standard inclusion criteria used in clinical trials may be systematically excluding racial and ethnic minorities. Broadening eligibility criteria to include more diverse participants would make it easier to recruit patients for trials and provide better data on how therapies will work in heterogeneous patient populations. The NIH responded in December detailing several steps the Institutes are taking to include more women, minorities, children and older adults in clinical trials. This included broadening eligibility criteria at the National Cancer Institute to make clinical trials more representative.
My biggest take away from working on Capitol Hill so far has been the professionalism and dedication of Hill staffers. Everyone I have interacted with thinks critically about their policy issues and cares deeply about public service. A huge thank you to the Biophysical Society for the opportunity to spend this year on the Hill.