Healthcare Policy & Advocacy w/ Dr. Anahita Dua | BackTable Podcast Ep. 326

In this episode, host Dr. Ally Baheti interviews vascular surgeon Dr. Anahita Dua on the importance of political advocacy in healthcare, including why she created a PAC, the importance of healthcare workers in Congress, and how you can get involved.
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SHOW NOTES
Dr. Dua is a vascular surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, co-director of the Peripheral Arterial Disease Center, Clinical Director of Research, the Director of the Vascular Lab and the Associate Director of the Wound Care Center. Her passion is limb salvage, and she performs open and endovascular techniques. She was born in Scotland, grew up in Wisconsin, completed medical school in the UK followed by general surgery residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin, vascular surgery fellowship at Stanford, a post-doctoral research fellowship at UT Houston, and finally an MBA and Masters in trauma sciences. She is also a wife, mom of two, and recently created a political action committee (PAC).
Before creating a PAC, she initially considered running for Congress. She was tired of seeing injustices both on the healthcare side with her patients, as well as in her own family. She bought a bulletproof backpack for her daughter after a school shooting near where they live, and since that day, she has not stopped fighting for change. Instead of running for Congress herself, she decided to create a PAC with the goal of getting 10 people in Congress who shared her ideas about the change needed in this country. She raised money, surpassed her goal, and got two people in Congress in just one month.
She knew she had to pick a side to get anywhere with the current state of politics in this country, so she decided to support someone only if they were a healthcare worker and a Democrat. She chose candidates based on their policies and their personality. She spoke with each one to get a sense of who they were, and she was looking for people who were intelligent, nimble, and who she would trust to babysit her kids. She then called a list of colleagues, informed them who she was supporting, and asked for their financial support. Dr. Dua hopes to have an impact on healthcare reform by creating advice specific to diseases such as diabetes. There is no standardization for limb problems, and this leads to disparities in care, with staggeringly unequal rates of amputations among different racial and socioeconomic groups. She aims to develop a standard of care that is implemented federally to improve limb care and reduce amputations.
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RESOURCES
Healthcare for Action:
www.healthcareforaction.com
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The BackTable Podcast is a resource for interventional radiologists, vascular surgeons, interventional cardiologists, and other interventional and endovascular specialists to learn tips, techniques, and the ins and outs of the devices in their cabinets.
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