Shelley A. Hearne on the Pew Health Group

Shelley A. Hearne

Managing Director, Pew Health Group

The Pew Charitable Trusts

Our featured expert is Shelley A. Hearne, managing director of the Pew Health Group.

Based on research and critical analysis, the Pew Health Group seeks to improve the health and well-being of all Americans. It advocates policies that reduce potentially dangerous health risks in consumer, medical and food products and services.

Visit the Health section of our Web site for more information on the work of the Pew Health Group.

Questions and Answers

Question

Tell us about the Pew Health Group. What are some of the issues you are focusing on?

Answer

People should not have to worry about dangers in the products they use every day – whether it is the medicines they take, the food they eat or the credit cards they use. By addressing the government policies that oversee these products, the Pew Health Group will continue to have a significant impact on the safety of the goods we consume in our daily lives.

For example, we are advocating measures to protect the continued effectiveness of antibiotics, a precious resource that saves countless American lives every year. While humans are prescribed antibiotics for short-term disease, these same critically important drugs are often fed to animals on industrial farms over the majority of their lives.  We need legislation to halt the overuse of antibiotics so this vital weapon in fighting human disease won’t be undercut to help meat producers speed weight gain in their herds and overcome unsanitary conditions in their facilities.

Two of our other areas of focus include working to improve the safety and oversight of the nation’s food supply, as well as seeking increased transparency and safeguards in the way drugs are made and distributed.

Question

Policy makers and the public constantly are bombarded with information about health. What can the Pew Health Group add to the debate?

Answer

Americans hear new and sometimes conflicting information about what’s safe and what’s potentially dangerous. We are committed to providing the public with information based on sound science and thorough, unbiased analysis. In turn, this will promote common-sense policies that help limit health hazards in the goods we consume. Through these efforts, we can contribute to making Americans healthier and safer.

Question

Can you give me a few examples of recent policy victories for the Pew Health Group?

Answer

As part of our consumer product and food safety work, the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed sweeping legislative changes that will help improve the oversight of food safety. The Pew Health Group was instrumental in educating policy makers on the need to pass the House bill and in outlining key provisions that would have the most positive impact on Americans’ health. As a founding member of the Make Our Food Safe coalition – a group that includes public health and consumer organizations and groups representing the families of victims of foodborne illness – we are supporting similar legislation in the Senate to keep dangerous pathogens out of the food supply.

The effort to pass a new food safety bill comes on the heels of the passage of landmark legislation to reduce predatory practices in the credit card industry. Our team, led by a former credit card chief executive and supported by other banking veterans, developed the Safe Credit Card Standards that formed the basis of extensive outreach efforts with consumer groups, industry representatives and policy makers.  We provided crucial research and analysis to lawmakers to show widespread, harmful industry practices and the need for changes in federal law to better protect consumers. As a result, the new legislation included many of the standards recommended by our Pew Safe Credit Cards Project.

Question

Why does the Pew Health Group portfolio include financial products and services?

Answer

Money matters to our health. Data shows that economic well-being will influence a family’s health and longevity. When families struggle to pay their mortgages, they are also likely struggling to cover healthcare costs or purchase nutritious food for their children. The Pew Health Group is focused on how to reduce unnecessary and hidden risks in the financial products we use every day, which we believe will help improve health.

Question

Further building on the idea of one’s physical health, the Pew Health Group’s Prescription Project seeks to eliminate or reduce conflicts of interest for physicians. What can you and your colleagues do to help limit the risks posed by pharmaceuticals?

Answer

More than 100 Americans died last year after taking a blood-thinning drug that was tainted during manufacture in China. Our regulatory framework was never designed to deal with today’s globalized supply chain. We need a system for the 21st century. A key goal of the Pew Health Group is ensuring that pharmaceuticals – an essential of modern daily life – are safe.

Pharmaceuticals and medical products make an important contribution to human health. We created the Pew Prescription Project to press for changes that will increase evidence-based prescribing and ensure that our pharmaceuticals are approved, manufactured and marketed in the safest way possible. That includes improved transparency concerning drug and medical device company marketing. It also includes improved oversight of the way drugs are made and distributed.

Question

Pew has a long-term commitment to furthering biomedical sciences, both in the United States and in Latin America. Will that change?

Answer

As history has shown, the boldest discoveries often occur through unexpected pathways. For 25 years, the Pew Biomedical Scholars Program has been fostering scientific innovation crucial to understanding the causes of disease and finding cures. The program identifies and supports the best and brightest young scientists, challenging them to expand the frontiers of research that will help us tackle cancer, diabetes and tuberculosis, to name just a few. Now with over 400 alumni, the program includes Nobel Prize winners, MacArthur Fellows and recipients of the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.

As a partner program, Pew launched the Latin American Fellows Program, which has since funded 175 fellows throughout the region. The program fosters collaboration between scientists in Latin America and the United States by supporting postdoctoral level scientists’ training in the U.S. and funding their research efforts after they return to their home countries.

As a health scientist myself, I couldn’t be more pleased knowing that Pew is helping these extraordinary researchers early in their careers. Our efforts to advance biomedical innovations will continue to be a cornerstone of a science-driven Pew Health Group.  Whether we are spurring creativity in the laboratory or in the national policy arena, we are singularly focused on science being the key ingredient to solving today and tomorrow’s most critical health problems.