With the transition of the 2020 ASH Annual Meeting to an all-virtual event, the annual Grassroots Network Session will be held virtually on November 18, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. This year’s featured speaker will be Luke Hartig, Senior Vice President for Product Strategy & Consulting at National Journal, a nonpartisan policy news and current events organization in Washington, DC. Mr. Hartig, who leads National Journal’s policy stakeholder mapping service, the Network Science Initiative, and new policymaker research service, will present a post-election analysis and his predictions about how the outcome may impact health care and medical research.
“After the election results are tallied, the key is building relationships with the [administration’s] new team,” Mr. Hartig stated. “Whether that's a Biden administration or a second Trump term, we'll talk through their respective health care teams and what they might mean for things such as access, coverage, biomedical research, and other issues.”
The ASH Grassroots Network, available to all ASH members who live in the United States, helps support advocacy efforts on behalf of the hematology community. It provides an enormous wealth of resources, including a monthly newsletter that communicates updates surrounding legislation at the national level and sometimes locally, as well as periodic notifications when a particular initiative is in need of greater support. Online, you can craft a letter that automatically populates your legislator’s information, or you can modify it with your personal perspective so that your Senators and Representatives hear firsthand about the needs of the health care and hematology community. ASH Committee on Government Relations Chair Alan Rosmarin, MD, said of the importance of the network’s efforts, “Let me just say that numbers count here, and it’s very important that we’re all heard because those legislators are going to be tallying the number of calls and emails that they get on a particular issue. So, I encourage all of us to belong to the Grassroots Network.”
Access a recording of the session
Annual meeting attendees can access the recording via the virtual meeting platform
