AAP-CA 2011 Year-end Advocacy Highlights for Chapter Reports

I. Bills: A Record 22 AAP-CA Supported Bills Signed in First-Year of Two Year Session!

AAP-CA had an extremely successful year in advocacy at the state level! 2011 is the first year of California’s 2011-2012 Legislative session, so many bills are still in process and do not yet have an outcome. Even so, AAP-CA advocacy saw 22 of our priority bills already signed and enacted into law! This is a record first-year tally, and we believe at least in part is reflective of both improved advocacy communication with our members (including our upgraded Advocate Now page at www.aap-ca.org/bills) and increased Chapter resident advocacy through outreach and education.

In addition to our sponsored bill, AB 301, to protect California Children’s Services (see below), our Successes this year include expansion of booster seat requirements to age 8 or 4 feet nine inches in height per AAP policy, mandated insurance coverage for prenatal care, addition of SCID (“bubble boy syndrome”) to routine newborn screening, removal of onerous eligibility screens for food stamps to reduce hunger in CA children and families, and establishment of a “Read Across CA” week to promote literacy.

For a complete list of signed AAP-CA bills,, see below. In aggregate, this represents a tremendous achievement for our Chapter, a relatively small organization that does not employ a lobbyist, and operates only through dedicated pediatrician volunteers and chapter and district staff.

AAP-CA Sponsored Bills

AB 301 Pan (D)

The California Children’s Services program for children with serious and chronic conditions (CCS) was scheduled to be rolled into California’s Medicaid Managed Care program at the end of 2011. AAP-CA had grave concerns about access to pediatric subspecialists and quality of care if this were to occur. Enactment of AB 301, an AAP-CA sponsored bill, protects important functions of local and statewide CCS through 2016. AB 301 was authored by Richard Pan, MD, FAAP, the only pediatrician in the California Legislature, and was strongly supported by Chapter-level advocacy. This success could not have happened without the many Chapter members that responded to Chapter Alerts and individually contacted their Legislators and the Governor.

SUCCESSES: SUPPORT

AB 6 (Fuentes)

AB 9 (Ammiano)

AB 25 (Hayashi)

AB 300 (Ma)

AB 395 (Pan)

AB 499 (Atkins)

AB 581 (Speaker Perez)

AB 673 (Speaker Perez)

AB 709 (Brownley)

AB 768 (Gatto & Ma)

AB 1156 (Eng)

AB 1319 (Butler)

ACR 29 (Bonilla & Ma)

ACR 62 (Brownley)

SB 36 Simitian

SB 161 (Huff)

SB 222 (Alquist & Evans)

SB 614 (Kehoe)

SB 695 (Hancock)

SB 746 (Lieu)

SB 929 (Evans)

SB 946 (Steinberg & Evans)

SUCCESSES: OPPOSE

SB 486 (Dutton)

II. State Budget: Wholesale CHIP Elimination Defeated

As part of his budget California Governor Jerry Brown proposed elimination of California’s CHIP Program, Healthy Families (HF), and movement of those 870,000 children into Medi-Cal (MC), to be implemented in 2012. This was a particularly challenging issue on which to advocate, as the nature of the state budget process allows little time for thoughtful analysis or stakeholder engagement. In short, the emphasis in the budget is only on how to make the numbers work, especially in a deficit year like this one.

None-the-less, AAP-CA was successful in our urgent request to legislators to take the HF-MC shift out of the budget process and move it into a legislative policy process, where it could be heard by policy committees, since a full assessment of how this move will impact access and quality of care for California’s children is critical! The budget action taken therefore included directing the California Department of Health Care Services to report to the Legislature by December 31, 2011 regarding the specifics of how this move would be made and what impact it would have. AAP-CA is providing input to the department, including a survey of our membership, to inform their development of a process and plan.

III. Court/Legal Actions

AAP-CA joins American Diabetes Association in urging CA Supreme Court to permit trained non-nurses to administer insulin in schools

May 12, 2011 AAP-CA signed an amicus brief supporting the American Diabetes Association request to the California Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling supporting a statute that restricts insulin administration in schools to nurses only. The AAP-CA Board’s decision is consistent with the National AAP policy supporting the use of appropriately trained non-nurses to provide students with insulin in schools.

AAP-CA took this action because it believes that the health and well-being of California children with diabetes will be better served if more individuals with proper training are available to administer insulin in schools, given the severe shortage of school nurses in California. At the same time, we our Chapter is strongly supportive of school nurses and continues to advocate at the state level for their increased funding and availability.

IV. Legislative Day

AAP-CA holds highly successful Legislative Day in Sacramento

In April of 2011 our Chapter AAP-CA had a highly successful Legislative Day in Sacramento. Over 100 pediatrician and pediatric resident participants    visited scores of legislative offices to   advocate for children and pediatricians. Our message to legislators is that AAP-CA is a  “24/7” resource to them on issues of child health and well-being, and we are happy to help in the development of bills and to answer questions on any bills that come before them. We also advocated specifically on our bill list of supported and sponsored bills. (See above Section I.)