2023–2024 ACCP-ASHP-VCU Congressional Healthcare Policy Fellow Application Deadline Approaching!

For 15 years, this fellowship has offered pharmacists an opportunity to gain insight into health care policy analysis and development through immersion in the congressional environment. Over the year, fellows are mentored in legislative evaluation, policy development, research, and writing. Applications for the 2023–2024 Healthcare Policy Fellowship are due by January 31, 2023.

Staff from ACCP, VCU and ASHP celebrate in-person with past-Policy Fellows.

The 2022–2023 Fellow, Amanda Ferguson, Pharm.D., is currently serving on the staff of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) in the U.S. Senate. Ferguson earned her Pharm.D. degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy after completing undergraduate requirements at Howard University. She is currently completing her master’s degree in public policy at Georgetown University. Between earning these degrees, Ferguson served as an active duty commissioned officer in the U.S. Department of the Air Force and Defense Health Agency (DHA) for almost 10 years. Her domestic and international experiences cover a broad range of clinical and operational pharmacy practices, academia, defense health care, and health care policy. Toward the end of her tenure there, she served as the director of operations for a military treatment facility (MTF) in the initial year of the military health reform. She states:

As a part of this reform, all MTFs were mandated by Congress to transition from self-management to the authority, direction, and control of DHA. Such overhaul required complex coordination and policy rewrites to standardize health care delivery across all services of the entire military. It was through this experience I became more involved in health policy and, by the completion of this assignment, I was clear on the extent to which policies can impact people and how important representation is to these policy discussions.

Ferguson was originally inspired to pursue pharmacy because of pharmacists’ involvement in her mother’s care and treatment for sickle cell anemia. Their frequent interactions with her and her family and the attentiveness they showed to her mother’s care regimen made her realize just how impactful pharmacists can be in their patients’ lives:

Being [my mother’s] advocate throughout my life made me realize I wanted to pursue a career in health care. I found pharmacy most interesting as a child because of how accessible we are to our patients and how integral we are in their care, both in the hospital and when they return to their homes. To be in a position to help restore a person’s health or quality of life is truly a privilege.

Ferguson hopes to use her background to better advocate for inclusive health care policies at the national level and provide a pharmacist’s perspective to lawmakers and other relevant constituents.

Innovation really needs to be married up with policy change. We can make efforts at the tactical level to continuously try to innovate operations, but if the policies aren’t updated and aligned, there will continuously be bottlenecks.

After completing the fellowship, Ferguson hopes to continue working in health policy development in some fashion.

My dream job would be at the intersection of health care, policy, innovation and social welfare. That could be a position on The Hill, a position with a health care consulting firm or a thinktank. The opportunities are limitless and I’m excited to see how everything will unfold!

About the Health Policy Fellow Program

Launched in 2006, this prestigious program offers a unique, yearlong health care policy learning experience in the U.S. Congress. This provides pharmacists an opportunity to gain insight into health care policy analysis and development through immersion in the congressional environment. The Fellow Program begins in July with 1 week at the Brookings Institution and 3 weeks each with ACCP’s and ASHP’s government affairs offices, followed by 12 months on Capitol Hill.

Alumni Fellows

The 2020–2021 Fellow, Nimit Jindal, Pharm.D., is serving as Health Policy Advisor in the U.S. House of Representatives, working for Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-CO).

After their service in the program, past fellows have gone on to engage in a variety of important roles in health care policy and government:

• Nilofar Jafari, Pharm.D., MPH, currently serves as a Pharmacy Benefits Management Clinical Informatics Pharmacist Program Specialist, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
• Rita A. Habib, Pharm.D., MPH, currently works as a full-time staff member in the office of Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO).
• Tracy Rupp, Pharm.D., MPH, is currently a Consumer Safety Officer, CDER Office of Compliance at the FDA.
• Daniel Nam, RPh, J.D., is now the Associate Principal, Pharmacy Policy at Avalere Health.

Applications for 2023–2024 Pharmacy Healthcare Policy Fellow Program

The application deadline for 2023 is January 31. Interested candidates should visit the website of the pharmacy Congressional Healthcare Policy Fellow Program for more information and instruction on submitting an application. For more information, click here.