WASHINGTON – Kim Schrier, MD, the first pediatrician elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, describes her decision to seek a seat in Congress as a natural extension of her work caring for children.
Nick Piegari/MDedge News
Dr. Kimberly Schrier is the first pediatrician elected to the House of Representatives
Following the 2016 election, she said she became concerned about what she saw as rising threats to the health of families. The Republican congressional majority made several attempts to undo the Affordable Care Act. In an interview with Pediatric News, Dr. Schrier, a Democrat who represents Washington’s 8th district, said she worried about a rollback of the insurance protections the 2010 law created for people with preexisting conditions. She understood the need for these guarantees of access to care both as a physician and as a patient – Dr. Schrier was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes as a teenager.
Her concerns extended beyond the health care and insurance. Efforts to weaken environmental protections could create new risks for children’s health, she said. Dr. Schrier also worried about attempts to erode Roe v. Wade and to reduce funding for programs such as SNAP supplemental food assistance.
“I felt like every one of those elements was under assault and so who better to speak to that than the pediatrician with her own preexisting condition?” she said.
Dr. Schrier currently is the only female physician serving in Congress. “It’s exciting to be here and it’s exciting to bring that lens that no one else really has,” she said.
Still, the decision to run was not easy.
“I’ve left a practice that I love. I had no intention to run for office ever in my life.”
Dr. Schrier earned an undergraduate degree in astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. She worked for about a year at the Environmental Protection Agency before earning her medical degree at the University of California, Davis, and completing her residency at Stanford (Calif.) University. She was working as a pediatrician in the Seattle-based Virginia Mason Health System when she decided to run for Congress.
Her husband, David, and son, Sam, are staying on in the family’s home of Sammamish as she settles into her new work as a legislator. She said she returns home often.
“I go back and forth every week. I just didn’t see it working all that well with having them here,” she said. “I work from 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning until 9:00 at night and would never see them anyway.”
Dr. Schrier has long used an insulin pump and glucose monitors to keep her diabetes in check.
“It is a bit more difficult because my days are less predictable” when working in the Capitol, she said. “So I carry granola bars around in my purse.”
Bipartisan bill
Dr. Schrier said she is taking her time in deciding on the first health care legislation that she will introduce in the House. She’s considering measures that would focus on children’s health, possibly in connection with nutrition or with protection of those in immigrant communities.