Highlights from the 2024 AAP Advocacy Conference
The AAP Advocacy Conference took place from April 14-16. Almost 300 pediatricians and trainees from across the country traveled to DC to learn and practice advocacy skills and hear updates on key child health priorities. Two highlights included talks by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsak, who spoke about the importance of WIC and continuing to secure funding for this vital program, and the first ever pediatrician elected to Congress, Representative Kim Schrier (Washington), who chronicled her journey from community pediatrician to Congressional Representative. The AAP also recognized Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown for being a champion for child health throughout his career. Ohio AAP President Dr. Chris Peltier had the honor of presenting the award to Senator Brown.
On the final day of the conference, attendees went to Capitol Hill, where a group of 13 pediatricians from the Ohio AAP Chapter (including Cincinnati Pediatricians Bob Frenck, Monique Quinn, Carley Riley and Chris Peltier) met with staff from Senator Brown, Senator Vance, and Representative Landsman’s offices to discuss two very important issues affecting child health: online safety and emergency services for children.
The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is a bipartisan bill that establishes a duty of care requiring platforms to avoid certain harms to minors (like eating disorders and suicide behavior), provides young people new tools and safeguards to control their digital experience, and gives the public transparency into the harms social media platforms hold. The Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) is another bipartisan bill that strengthens data privacy safeguards for children, extends protections to teens (the current law only protects children under the age of 13), and imposes meaningful limits on how social media companies can use the data they collect from young people (i.e. data-driven targeted ads).
The Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) Program is the only federal program dedicated to improving the emergency care continuum for children. EMSC improves the quality of emergency care for children by supporting states and territories to expand and improve their capacity to reduce and respond to pediatric emergencies, conducting research by supporting the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (which serves almost 1.3 million pediatric patients) and by connecting improvements in pediatric emergency care capacity to improved pediatric emergency health outcomes. In Ohio, the EMSC program has provided resources to make sure fire departments across the state have access to updated evidence based pediatric protocols and guidelines. Ohio’s EMSC Committee has partnered with the state EMS Board has allowed state grant money to pride smaller, more rural fire departments access to high-fidelity pediatric specific skill simulation training that often only larger/urban departments have access to. The Committee has also partnered with the Ohio Department of Health to develop up to date school nurse guidelines. The EMSC Program is up for a 5-year reauthorization, at the same level of funding as currently in place.
More information about these issues can be found by clicking on these links:
Please consider taking 1-2 minutes to contact Senators Brown and Vance and Representative Landsman urging them to support these 2 important bills. Contact information for each is listed below:
Senator Sherrod Brown 513-684-1021 or 202-224-2315
Senator JD Vance 202-224-3353
Representative Greg Landsman 513-810-7988 or 202-225-2216