Eleven-year Arizona House Veteran Fights for Better Health Care

Health care for all of her constituents is a policy priority for Arizona Representative Susan Gerard (Flemming Fellow ’95), Chair of the House Health Committee. More than half of the 29 bills Representative Susan Gerard introduced in the 1999 session were related to health or health care. Earlier this session, Gerard and Senator Sue Grace (Flemming Fellow ’96), Chair of the Senate Health Committee, were successful in drawing resources and attention to the state mental health hospital.

Gerard and Grace’s legislation will secure $5 million dollars for setting up and staffing a task force to make infrastructural improvements to the hospital and address long-term housing needs for seriously mentally ill residents.

As the last generation of Arizona legislators to be in office more than eight years, Gerard says one of her "biggest contributions" this year has been to educate new members. By working with newer members, she helped secure $60 million for K-12 education in the two-year budget.

Gerard’s interest in health care extends to planning the use of tobacco settlement funds on health projects.

The outlook for her tobacco settlement proposal is unsure, so Gerard is working with community stakeholders. In her no-nonsense, pragmatic way, Gerard says that, to have a chance of spending the tobacco settlement on health care, "we need to take it out of the hands of the legislature."

Gerard is a self-described "moderate" Republican. "As the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other," she says, "moderates play a critical role in providing balance and fairness in the development of public policy."

At the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Community Voices: Health Care for the Underserved meeting in Tempe, coordinated by CPA, Gerard spoke about how to bring community voices into the policy making process.