Health care consumes an inordinate amount of the U.S. gross domestic product at 18.3%. In 2021, healthcare spending increased by 2.7% to $4.3 trillion, equating to $12,914 per person annually. Under that average, prescription medications are the highest expenditure. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Retail prescription drug spending increased 7.8% to $378.0 billion in 2021, a faster rate than in 2020 when spending increased by 3.7%. The acceleration in growth was due to an increase in the use of prescription drugs in 2021.” On top of that staggering national economic impact are the personal, emotional, and familial burdens that take a toll on patients and caregivers.

Calling it “the most comprehensive set of executive actions any president has ever taken to make care more affordable and accessible for hardworking families and further support care workers and family caregivers,” the Biden-Harris administration announced a series of executive orders to broaden the availability of support services and resource across the United States. The April 2023 order included more than 50 directives for government agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services.

Praising her vision and leadership as a world-renowned surgical oncologist, cancer researcher, and educator, on May 15, 2023, the White House announced President Joe Biden’s nomination of Monica Bertagnolli, MD, as the next National Institutes of Health director.

To strengthen and advance policies for nurses, U.S. Representatives Dave Joyce (D-OH), Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Lauren Underwood (D-IL), and Jen Kiggans (R-VA) launched the 118th Congressional Nursing Caucus in April 2023. Joyce and Bonamici are the caucus co-chairs, and Underwood, an RN, and Kiggans, a geriatric nurse practitioner, serve as vice chairs. ONS is a sponsoring organization in support of the caucus’s congressional efforts.

In an attempt to strongly regulate the e-cigarettes and vapes industry, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration filed civil money penalty complaints against four tobacco product manufacturers for manufacturing and selling e-liquid products without authorization. The action marks the first time FDA has filed CMP complaints against tobacco product manufacturers to enforce the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act’s premarket review requirements for new tobacco products. 

With the anticipated end of the public health emergency looming after three years of being consumed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services, wrote a letter to state governors praising their efforts in the pandemic, offering a supportive hand, and highlighting the Biden-Harris administration’s accomplishments in combating COVID-19.

Joe Camel, the Marlboro Man, and the women who’ve “come a long way, baby” with Virginia Slims are marketing mascots that created an image of smoking as cool, chic, and classy—a concept that’s still cemented in the minds of many Americans today. For the past 30 years, public awareness campaigns have battled that belief among young people to dramatically curtail underage smoking, finally reaching a real reduction in youth tobacco use.

From President Richard Nixon’s war on cancer in 1971 to President Joe Biden’s commitment to “ending cancer as we know it” in 2022, fighting the disease has been a bipartisan focus. Yet in that era, when cancer hit home, policymakers often hushed their own diagnoses. But times change, and many of today’s lawmakers are now boldly sharing their personal experiences with cancer as inspiration for action.

Schoolhouse Rock! celebrated its 50th anniversary in January 2023. The Saturday morning cartoons debuted in 1973 and brought school lessons on a variety of subjects, including government and democracy, to children through catchy yet educational lyrics and beats. 

The United States commemorated Anthony Fauci’s, MD, retirement from government service during a tribute ceremony held at the National Institutes of Health’s campus in Maryland in December 2022. Fauci served more than 50 years in government and 38 years as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

After more than two years of heightening response and awareness in every corner of U.S. society, the COVID-19 pandemic public health emergency (PHE) and national emergency is sticking around a few months longer. Originally set to expire on March 1 and April 11, respectively, both will finally come to an end on May 11, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration announced in January.

In the final days of 2022, as the world turned the calendar to celebrate a new year, the cancer advocacy community also celebrated: One of ONS’s longtime priority bills, the Lymphedema Treatment Act, achieved a landmark legislative win, passing the U.S. Senate as part of the fiscal year 2023 omnibus funding package. President Biden signed it into law on December 29, 2022, securing access to treatment supplies for patients with cancer-related lymphedema.

To try to get ahead of a feared increase of COVID-19 cases over the winter, the Biden-Harris administration released a COVID-19 winter preparedness plan in December 2022 that focuses on making vaccinations, testing, and other resources easily accessible.

U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and U.S. Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) introduced the Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act in December 2022 to address gaps in survivorship care and formulate standards to improve quality of cancer care and navigation needs of survivors.

Sick. Americans are literally sick of the financial burden vulnerable patients endure because of high out-of-pocket, healthcare-related costs. The complicated and convoluted issue has no easy solution.

Midterm elections occurring halfway through a U.S. president’s first cycle are a referendum on that administration’s policies. Unable to take out their frustrations directly with the country’s chief executive, voters historically punish the president’s party at the ballot box. Still, politics is about people, and political scientists discourage attempts to quantify reactions and unexpected results. November 2022’s realignment of the federal power structure was an expected outcome.

The Lymphedema Treatment Act, a key piece of legislation for ONS’s health policy priorities, passed the U.S. House of Representatives in November 2022. The bill is now in the U.S. Senate for review along its journey to becoming law.

Along with outlining monetary spending for the upcoming years, the National Cancer Institute’s 2024 annual plan and budget proposal highlights areas of opportunity to advance cancer research, Douglas R. Lowy, MD, who was NCI acting director at the time, said in a September 2022 NCI’s director message.

The U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment of Arati Prabhakar, PhD, as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and chief advisor to the president for science and technology in September 2022, making her the first woman and person of color confirmed to lead OSTP.

Since the late 1990s, U.S. Congress has made a concerted effort to increase federal funding for the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) biomedical research and clinical trials. Through rare but always bipartisan largess, legislative appropriators have seen the benefits of investing in the science for precision medicine; supporting genetic-grounded, patient-centered care; and changing the quality and longevity of life for millions of people, including those with cancer diagnoses.

The U.S. Department of Justice, on behalf of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, filed complaints for permanent injunctions against six e-cigarette manufacturers in October 2022. It was the first time FDA initiated injunction proceedings to enforce review requirements for new tobacco products.

To better reflect product descriptions and enforce commitment to diversity and inclusion, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products updated its term “grandfathered tobacco product” to “pre-existing tobacco product” in August 2022.

As monkeypox continues to spread, the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus urged the Biden-Harris Administration in August 2022 to request funding from U.S. Congress to combat the virus.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program helped drop the percentage of uninsured children from 15% to 3.7% since its authorization by Congress in 1997, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released in celebration of CHIP’s 25th anniversary in August 2022.

One hundred twenty years ago, the U.S. Congress initiated the country’s first steps “to regulate the sale of virus, serum, toxin, and analogous products,” passing the 1902 Biologics Control Act to codify, oversee, and regulate a burgeoning field. By 1906, the legislation expanded to the Food and Drug Act, which formally established the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Veterans exposed to toxic substances in service will have more access to cancer care and other medical assistance thanks to the recently signed Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act. The PACT Act passed with bipartisan effort by Congress in August 2022 and later signed into law.

On September 22, 2022, to help achieve its priority of expanding the availability of overdose reversal products, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued the Exemption and Exclusion from Certain Requirements of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act for the Distribution of FDA-Approved Naloxone Products During the Opioid Public Health Emergency industry guidance.

By prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “race, color, national origin, sex, age, and disability,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ July 2022 proposed rule strengthens Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, improving civil rights protections for patients in certain federally funded health programs.

For the past 244 years, the world has envied the Great American Experience. Civics 101 class equipped us with the U.S. checks and balances system’s elementary pillars:

• Government has three equal branches: executive (the president), legislative (the congress), and judiciary (the courts).
• When legislative laws are disputed, the judicial system interprets a law’s constitutionality.

Research and practice changes funded through healthcare legislation have influenced today’s care delivery across all settings: hospitals, clinics, and even homes. And with their constituents laser-focused on health in today’s pandemic society, legislators have never made that happen so quickly.

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson, reversing the decision from the 1973 case, Roe v. Wade. Many nursing, medical, and health organizations issued statements in reaction, and opinions among ONS stakeholders and constituents will differ on the decision. As it leads an organization that represents oncology nurses and advocates for patient-centered care, the ONS Board of Directors reviews social and political issues through the lens of the Society’s mission. With that perspective, the ONS Board believes that two statements from other organizations are important for members to know.

Creating a pathway for policymakers, providers, and the public to understand and recommend a new professional nursing dynamic, the Institute of Medicine’s 2011 Future of Nursing report investigated the current and future state and challenges of the nursing profession.

Since President Joe Biden announced the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) in October 2021, the National Cancer Institute and National Institutes of Health (NIH) shared responsibility for implementing its goals to improve the U.S. government’s ability to speed biomedical and health research. In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officially placed the agency under NIH.

Amid its celebration of Black Maternal Health Week in April 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) raised awareness of a sobering fact: Black maternal mortality and morbidity are a healthcare crisis throughout the United States.

More than $560 million in provider relief fund (PRF) phase four distribution payments reached more than 4,100 healthcare institutions across the United States in February 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The funding will be used to help healthcare institutions prevent, prepare for, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including maintaining operations at facilities and recruiting and retaining healthcare professionals during the workforce shortage.

Driven by evidence-based practice and patient-centered care, nurses have earned the faith of the American public. For two decades, nurses have been ranked the most trusted and ethical profession in the United States. Although trust is critical, what it lacks is support for the profession through federal investment in research, education, and workforce issues for long-term stability.

To reduce the disparities affecting maternity health outcomes, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office on Women’s Health (OWH) launched the Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Data and Analysis Initiative, an $8 million contract with Premier, Inc., the agency announced in December 2021. The initiative is rallying a network of hospitals to deploy evidence-based best practices in maternity care.

Local policies have reduced the availability and youth and adult use of products like flavored e-cigarettes and menthol cigarettes compared to areas without restrictions, the Truth Initiative reported after the first comprehensive quality review that looked at the outcomes of flavor and menthol tobacco restrictions. The research, which was conducted in partnership with the Research Triangle Institute, was published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

An investment of nearly $1 billion will help modernize 1,292 Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) health center program-funded health centers across the United States, according to an October 2021 announcement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The funding will be used to support major healthcare construction and renovation projects and strengthen the country’s healthcare infrastructure.

Preventing overdoses—from any substance, but particularly opioids—is an urgent need during the U.S. opioid epidemic that involves a four-step process: prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced. HHS released a new overdose prevention strategy in October 2021 to increase access to services for patients and their families who use substances that can put them at risk for overdose.

Under a newly refreshed strategy, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center is expanding models in the healthcare industry that reduce program costs and improving quality and outcomes for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, the agency announced in an October 2021 white paper.

After a decade and three legal challenges that culminated in another U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ([ACA], commonly known as Obamacare) is currently established canon. On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in favor of the defendants in the case of California et al. v. Texas et al., maintaining ACA’s constitutionality. It was a firm 7-2 decision.

Innovative, affordable, and accountable care are the key to transforming the healthcare system to achieve health equity, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center’s 10-year plan, which the center announced on August 12, 2021.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra celebrated the Children’s Health Insurance Program’s (CHIP’s) 24th anniversary on August 4, 2021, a program that “for more than two decades, has been a lifeline for millions of children and families across America,” with an incredible announcement: in 2020 and 2021, CHIP provided more than 6.8 million enrolled individuals with coverage during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

In its first year, new presidential administrations release a skinny budget that contains more topline items rather than deep dives into each agency and subdivision. Following suit, in April 2021 the Biden-Harris administration released its request for discretionary funding with limited definition, but it was enough to foreshadow the fiscal year (FY) 2022 funding cycle.

In today’s digital age of news, the public often struggles to decipher real science from misleading or incorrect information—and the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has only magnified the situation. Seeing a detrimental impact to the health of the nation, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, issued his first advisory report of the Biden administration on the topic of misinformation in public health.

As of July 2021, more than 159 million individuals in the United States have been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 coronavirus, totaling about 48.1% of the U.S. population. However, approximately 173 million others have not, or suggested they will not, receive the vaccination. President Biden’s goal of having 70% of Americans receive at least one vaccine dose and 160 million adults to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by July 4, 2021, fell short.

Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon delivered his third State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress, boldly outlining audacious goals with major federal funding attached. Seeking $100 million for what he deemed “the war on cancer,” Nixon pledged his commitment to invest federal resources in the fight against cancer.

Those without healthcare coverage can now purchase annual policies through state exchanges until August 15, 2021, under the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS’s) extended Special Enrollment Period (SEP), ensuring continued access to affordable coverage for Americans during a time of healthcare uncertainty.