American Medical Student Association

AMSA has been placed on the National Rifle Association (NRA) “enemies list” ... and we are PROUD!

We are also urging members and supporters to sign a petition that pushes the Obama administration and Congress to adopt a comprehensive strategy to limit gun violence and protect public health.

The list – National Organizations with Anti-Gun Policies – is published by the gun lobby’s political arm, the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.

“We're proud to advocate for the reduction of violence, for stricter gun legislation, for the protection of Americans against violent gun crime,” says Elizabeth Wiley, MD, JD, MPH. “As future physicians, we urge Congress to act now and help us reduce the number of patients we will see who are victims of senseless gun tragedies.”

“It’s hard to believe that gun safety isn’t a medical issue when you are on the team taking care of a 3 year old with a bullet in her lung,” says Shahram Ahari, MPH, a senior medical student at UC-Davis School of Medicine.

At AMSA’s Annual Convention, March 14-17, members will vote on updated policy that includes universal background checks for all new gun purchases, criminalization of gun trafficking, and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Please join AMSA by signing the petition to President Obama and members of Congress. The numbers are staggering: of the 16,000 homicides in 2010, more than 11,000 were due to firearms. Read more and sign the petition here.

AMSA, along with the National Physician's Alliance (NPA), is pushing the Obama administration to fully implement the Physician Payments Sunshine Act which is aimed at transparency. 

The legislation, part of the Affordable Care Act, requires drug, medical device, biologic, and medical equipment manufacturers to collect data on financial relationships with doctors and hospitals, and to report that data to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 

The two groups sent a letter to the White House stating:

The NPA and AMSA have supported the PPSA since its passage and are deeply discouraged that HHS has not yet released final regulations, even though the statute called for regulations to be issued by October 1, 2011. We are now 15 months past the statutory deadline. 

We are joined in our support by a diverse array of stakeholders, including drug and device companies which have already invested a great deal of money to comply with the Sunshine Provisions. 

As physicians and medical students, we understand that payments from industry can set the stage for significant conflicts of interest that can lead to the prescription of costly treatment, even when equally effective, safe, and less expensive treatments are readily available. Such conflicts pose a grave threat to the intent of the Affordable Care Act, which is to deliver quality and affordable care to all Americans. Transparency about industry payments is an important step toward restoring trust and integrity in medicine. 

There is no call for further delay. We request that final regulations be released no later than January of this year, so that manufacturers can quickly implement procedures to begin collecting payment information.

Want to help??

The Physician Payment Sunshine Act regulations have yet to come out - we need to put pressure on the White House to get them out! If you're on Twitter please retweet one or more of the below:

T: @matthewherper physicians are "disappointed" that the sunshine provisions remain unimplemented <link>

Link: Prominent Doctors Call For Action On Transparency Law – January 16, 2013

T: @ChuckGrassley called delayed rules on Physician Payments Sunshine Act “unacceptable” @pharmalot <link>

Link: Frustration Rises Over The Missing Sunshine Rules – January 17, 2013

T: RT @FiercePharma AARP, AFL-CIO and prominent docs to White House: Get us the sunshine rules <link>

Link: AARP, AFL-CIO and prominent docs to White House: Get us the sunshine rules, stat, Fierce Pharma – January 18, 2013

Not on Twitter? Post the following to Facebook and tag AMSA National!

Prominent doctors, medical students, Eli Lilly, Medtronic, AARP, AFL-CIO, Pew urging the White House to adopt without further delay the "Sunshine rule," which requires pharmaceutical and medical device companies to disclose their financial relationships with doctors and teaching hospitals. Like and share if you agree that patients should know and that the government should act, Read here: http://www.pharmalot.com/2013/01/frustration-rises-over-the-missing-sunshine-rules/.

By Molly Zielenbach
AMSA State and Local Policy Coordinator

There’s an eerie similarity between election season and studying for med school exams. At the beginning, you’re in denial – plagued by memories of the stress, outrage, futility, and hopelessness you felt the last time, you pretend like election/test day isn’t staring at you from a distant but rapidly approaching future. Finally, though, something tips the scale and you begin to prepare. You pour your attention into diagrams, charts, “expert” testimonies (from pundits or your ever-wise classmates), and maybe you even start to care about the results. Then, as the day draws closer, you hit a wall. You’re in information overload. You just can’t care anymore.

So how do you get through the wall? For me, the answer is the same in both cases – I find something to keep me inspired. In the case of my impending cardio exam, it’s the joy in finally knowing why they’re always shouting “push more epi!” on Gray’s Anatomy (hey, whatever works, right?). In the case of the upcoming presidential election, it’s remembering that voting is a hard-won right, and a right that too many people in our society still have to fight for.

A large body of evidence tells us that social determinants of health – things like stable housing, clean air, safe neighborhoods, quality schools, access to healthy and affordable food, and good jobs – are the most important determinants of the diseases that bring us patients, and the effectiveness of our treatments. So what determines the social determinants? A major player is the history of discriminatory and unjust laws, policies, and budgets that have marginalized and disenfranchised huge segments of our country’s population, thereby directly and indirectly jeopardizing their health and wellbeing.

By voting, we can put pressure on policymakers, both local and national, to promote the health and welfare of our communities. By standing up for voters’ rights and providing voter registration to disenfranchised communities, we amplify the voices of our patients and support them in advocating for their own health and welfare. So, here are a few simple steps we, as medical students and AMSA chapters, can take to promote health and justice for all:

1) Educate yourself, not just on the Presidential candidates, but on local candidates and policies also being decided on election day. Have your AMSA chapter host an event in the next month on a policy issue that will be affected by the election (keep in mind that AMSA is non-partisan so events should not endorse any specific candidates). And, most importantly, go vote!

2) Sign this petition sponsored by RxDemocracy! and the National Physicians Alliance to defend our communities from voter rights infringement. Check out rxdemocracy.org for more information on the link between health and civic engagement.

3) Host a community voter registration drive at your hospital. This is much easier than it sounds, and depending on where your school is, AMSA’s policy team can connect you with local organizations that may already be doing it. Please contact me (policy.local@amsa.org) if you’re interested!

4) If you live in a state where restrictive voting policies are being enacted or contested, organize your fellow medical students and take a stand! This includes PA, TN, FL, OH, VA, and many others. Get in touch with AMSA’s policy team for more information on how to make your voice heard (again, policy.local@amsa.org).

So get out there and make a difference, for yourself and your patients!

Christopher A. Hesh
University of Maryland School of Medicine c/o 2015
Co-President of UMD AMSA

Barriers to healthcare access manifest in many forms and AMSA stands at the forefront of the fight to tear down these barriers in the effort to establish healthcare as a human right. Integral to this fight for access is the engine that drives discovery of healthcare delivery methods and new treatment programs: taxpayer-funded research.

The American public spends $60 billion each year on non-defense research through government programs like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE). [1] Accessing this research can cost anywhere from $15 to $32 for a single article to multi-thousand dollar subscription fees for a single journal, forcing taxpayers to pay twice: once to fund the research and again to see the results. [2] This necessity of paying multiple times for access to life-saving research furthermore serves as a direct barrier to healthcare access for patients, who rely on their physicians to provide them with timely treatment programs informed by federally-funded research.

We know from the success of the NIH Public Access Policy, which requires all NIH-funded research to be open-access 12 months after publication, that the scientific community is a powerful instrument of change. Indeed, the Public Access Policy has proven an invaluable step in the fight toward complete open access. The NIH, however, is not the only federal agency responsible for medical research grants. Furthermore, recently introduced bills such as the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699) have targeted open-access in an attempt to not only roll back the NIH’s public access policy, but completely prohibit open-access mandates for federally funded research altogether. The Research Works Act was eventually pulled by its legislative sponsors in response to overwhelming opposition by patients, students and taxpayers, but the fight for open access is not over.

AMSA believes the continued attack on open-access research equates to an attack on healthcare access. In response, we’re joining a coalition of individuals and organizations including the Public Library of Science and Wikimedia Foundation, along with over 20,000 current signatories, in supporting a ‘We The People’ petition urging President Obama sign a directive to require free, timely access over the internet to journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research. Help us reach this goal by signing the petition, and spread the word so that we can reach our target of 25,000 signatures by June 19th.

Sign the petition!

[1] Bennof, Richard J. Proposed Federal R&D Funding for FY 2011 Dips to $143 Billion, with Cuts in National Defense R&D. InfoBrief. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, September 2010. Available at: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf10327/nsf10327.pdf

[2] Examples of single article purchase prices come from the New England Journal of Medicine ($15 at http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1111961) and from The Lancet ($31.50 at http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2961625-5/fulltext).