Current Legislative Priority
For the past four years, we have been focusing on our efforts
on building support for two health promotion bills: Health
Promotion FIRST (S1001 and HR2354) and Healthy Workforce Act
(S803 and HR 1897).
In recent months, we have concentrated efforts on the committees
of jurisdiction for these bills: Senate Finance; Senate
Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP), Health Subcommittee
of the House Energy and Commerce, and the House Ways and Means
Committee. Our goal has been getting the provisions of our
bills in larger health care reform legislation. We have
had face-to-face meetings with staff of 42 of the 45 committee
members in the Senate and 43 of the 81 committee members in the
House. Our grass roots advocates have sent almost 1300
letters of support to their Senators and Representatives.
The great news is that many of the provisions of our bills are
included in health care reform drafts, or “Chairman’s marks”
released by these committees. We expect these bills to be
voted on at the committee level sometime between the end of June
and the middle of July, and at the full Senate and House of
Representatives level as soon as the end of July and as late as
the middle of September.
Our focus now is on making sure health promotion provisions that
are included in health care reform legislation remain in the
final bill that passes Congress and is signed into law by the President
Obama in October. We are placing special emphasis on the
provisions that came from our two original bills.
We are suspending our efforts to motivate grass roots advocates
to contact members of Congress until health care reform
legislation is passed at the committee level and is then
referred to the full Senate and House a vote. We expect
the committee level vote to be sometime between June 19th and July
15th. After the committee level vote, we will ask for your
support in reaching all 100 members of the Senate and 435
members of the House of Representatives to ensure that the
health promotion provisions remain in health care reform
legislation passed by the full Congress.
We will let you know when it is time to act by posting a notice
on this web site and by sending emails to everyone signed up on
our grass roots network. If you have not already joined
our grass roots network and would like to join,
please click here.
To make the advocacy process easier for you, we are developing a
new tool on our website that will generate personalized letters
for to your two Senators and your Representative. It
will include the name of the key legislative staff person and it
will send your letter by fax at no cost to you. This new
tool will be ready for you when we contact you in late June or
early July.
Thank you again for all your work. You have made a
difference!
Below is a summary of the Health Promotion FIRST and Healthy
Workforce Act for your reference.
U.S. Senators Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
introduced Health Promotion FIRST (S.1001) on May 7, 2009. The
bill was introduced May 12, 2009 (H.R.2354) Representative Jan Schkowsky (D-IL) and Michael
Burgess (R-TX). It provides a strategy
to integrate health promotion concepts into many areas of
national policy through strategic planning efforts with each
department of the federal government. It also solidifies the
health promotion science base through programs at the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC). Specific provisions include:
- A call for a national health promotion strategy and a
series of six strategic plans to help us determine the most
cost effective way to reach the greatest number of people
with the most effective programs to improve their health
through lifestyle change.
- Health promotion research agenda at NIH and CDC.
- Statement conveying full authority to CDC to set
eligibility criteria and select organizations to receive
Prevention Research Center Program grants. An explicit
statement that any qualified organization is eligible to
apply.
For your convenience we have provided a
fact sheet on the bill and a link to the
actual legislation (Senate)
(House
of Representatives). Also, please refer to an editorial by
Michael O’Donnell on
Health Promotion FIRST.
You may also see a list of companies that have
endorsed this bill.
Healthy Workforce Act
The Healthy Workforce Act (S.803) was introduced in the Senate
by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) on April 2,
2009. The bill was also introduced in the House of
Representatives (H.R.1897) by Earl Blumenauer (D-OR-3rd) and Mary
Bono-Mack (R-CA-45) on April 2, 2009. The Healthy
Workforce Act provides a tax credit for 50% of the cost of a
qualified employer health promotion program, up to $200/employee
for the first 200 employees and $100/employee for remaining
employees. The credit is conveyed through income tax credit with
for profit employers and through payroll tax with tax exempt
employers. It also instructs the Departments of the Treasury and
Health and Human Services to develop an outreach program to make
employers aware of the tax credit.
For you convenience, we have provided a
fact sheet on the bill. Links to the actual
legislation (Senate)
(House
of Representatives) and an editorial by Michael O’Donnell on the
Healthy Workforce Act.
You may also see a list of companies that have
endorsed
this bill.
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