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Ongoing Litigation and Clinician Advocacy Amid Health Policy Turbulence, with Shari Erickson, MPH
Erickson encouraged clinicians to get involved in advocacy for health policy issues they are passionate about.
Legal and institutional uncertainty continues to mount in response to shifting federal health policy directives. From executive orders affecting data infrastructure to changes in NIH funding processes, the cumulative impact is creating serious challenges for researchers, educators, and clinicians. Ongoing litigation1, including temporary injunctions, reflects the shifting landscape of the field at the moment, although many are waiting to see how the dust settles.
The American College of Physicians (ACP) and other organizations are concerned by a number of recent health policy issues and are advocating for these issues to be addressed. A talk at the ACP’s Internal Medicine (IM) Meeting 2025 last week in New Orleans, Louisiana, led by Shari Erickson, MPH, Chief Advocacy Officer and Senior Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, ACP, overviewed some of these key issues.2
HCPLive spoke with Erickson to learn more about health policy changes are affecting all players in the medical field, including especially research at universities. She also shared how clinicians can advocate for issues that may be important to them by easily contacting their local representatives through the ACP website or getting involved with their local ACP chapter, or chapters of other organizations.
“What's really important about [contacting your representatives] is that, particularly as clinicians, they should share their stories like, what are they seeing? What is the impact on them? Because there's only so much those of us in Washington can do or say, those stories are what really matter to people in Congress, because that's actually their constituents,” Erickson told HCPLive. “And so, what is impacting them? How is it impacting their patients?”
REFERENCES
PRESS RELEASE: Doctors for America Sues Over Removal of Health Information From HHS, CDC, FDA Websites. News release. DFA. February 4, 2025. https://doctorsforamerica.org/pr-removal-of-health-info/
Erickson S, Lyons G, Outland B. Hot Issues in Health Policy 2025. Presented at: ACP IM Meeting 2025; April 3-5; New Orleans, Louisiana.
