AAFP Issues Third Action Alert on Title VII

Contact your U.S. senators now. That's the message from the AAFP as family medicine increases its advocacy efforts to preserve Title VII, the federal program that provides funds to medical schools to increase the number of primary care professionals, particularly in rural and underserved areas.

That new effort consists of a June 27 action alert calling on AAFP members to urge their senators to restore the Title VII funds eliminated in an appropriations bill passed June 24 by the House. Section 747 in Title VII of the Public Health Service Act specifically funds training for primary care medicine (including family medicine) and dentistry. The appropriations bill now goes to the Senate.

This most recent action alert, the third within two weeks, provides two versions of a letter members can use: one tailored for members whose senators sit on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education -- expected to act on the bill July 12 -- and another for members whose senators are not on the subcommittee. The full Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to take action July 14.

In addition, the Academy has contacted constituent chapters and asked them to submit opinion columns and letters to newspapers across their states by July 11. Sample columns and letters, included in the request, provide background on Title VII, its role in preserving access to health care, and the economic impact of losing family medicine residencies and the physicians they graduate.

"We can't afford to lose the funding that helps train our family physicians," the sample opinion column says. "We must urge our senators to support this key program and bring it back to its current level of funding."

Physician input into the political process can be very successful, according to Susan Hildebrandt, assistant director of AAFP's Government Relations Division.

"The local physician who treats the legislators' constituents can personalize the effects of the congressional decisions better than anyone," she said. "We have seen it happen repeatedly. Whether it's what health information technology can do or how Medicaid serves families that otherwise would have to resort to the emergency room for their health care, family doctors know the stories that make legislation real."

That became apparent June 24, when Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies promised to address restoration of Title VII funds when representatives and senators meet to reconcile differences between their chambers' appropriations bills.

Regula's promise came in response to an appeal by Rep. Cathy McMorris, R-Wash. McMorris had learned about the connection between Title VII and rural constituents' access to health care from FPs Anne Montgomery, M.D., and Glen Stream, M.D., both of Spokane.

Stream, a member of the AAFP Commission on Legislation and Governmental Affairs, and Montgomery, his wife, briefly met with McMorris during the April Family Medicine Congressional Conference in Washington, D.C. McMorris later visited Montgomery's practice and learned more about the issues facing physicians in underserved areas.