Schaeffer Fellows gained insights into how issues of healthcare access are managed and how health policy is approached collaboratively at different levels of government.
Braiden Aaronson – Princeton University, Internship: Office of Congressmember Terri Sewell
Braiden was tasked with running the front office for the D.C. office, including interacting with guests, sorting mail, answering phone calls, and general office work.
“I worked on advocacy for public health bills such as H.R.2407 – Nancy Gardner Sewell Medicare Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act, a bill that would provide Medicare coverage for early detection tests for about 50 forms of cancer. I helped gather co-sponsors and drafted a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus to the Energy and Commerce Committee to accelerate the markup of H.R.2407.”
Eleanor Love – University of Southern California, Internship: U.S. Office of Personnel Management
Eleanor worked in the Office of the Director on several notable projects. She shared about the effort to implement policy for a federal health benefits program affecting 1.9 million Postal Service employees and annuitants.
“This was a huge agency-wide project involving almost 1,000 OPM staff (almost all in the Retirement Services or Health Insurance departments). I learned a lot about project management, leadership, organizational structure, navigating a huge project/policy roll out, different players in a huge project, how to engage people, good communication, and the reality of bureaucracy.”
Helping to write a policy document for the HBX (Health Benefit Exchange of Washington, D.C.) healthcare for childcare workers program was very valuable, because it felt to me like I was making a significant, individual impact into the implementation of government policy on the local level.”
–Seonbin Song, University of Virginia, Internship: Health Benefit Exchange of Washington, D.C.