2019 Foremother and Health Policy Hero Awards Luncheon Invitation

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro has been an outspoken champion for patients, medical research, and public health.  Born and raised in New Haven, in the Connecticut district she has represented since 1991, she was criticized in that first election for keeping her birth name rather than using her husband’s last name.  She has been a wonderful supporter of women’s rights and health, and championed bills aimed at improving cancer treatment and research, food safety, child nutrition, and veterans’ health. When she chaired the appropriations subcommittee that funds the FDA, her priority was to improve the safety of food and medical products.  Now that she chairs the appropriations subcommittee for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she is focused on improving healthcare for all Americans.  She is the first person to be honored by NCHR as a Health Policy Hero (2009) and Foremother.

In her more than 6 decades in journalism in New York and Washington, D.C. reporter and author Dorothy Butler Gilliam broke many barriers, most notably as the first African American woman reporter at the Washington Post in 1961. In her recently published memoir, Trailblazer: A Pioneering Journalist’s Fight to Make the Media Look More Like America, she describes immediately and repeatedly facing “prejudice outside and inside the tension-filled newsroom.”  She succeeded despite those barriers, and Gloria Steinem calls her “most rare of revolutionaries, one who not only climbs the barricades, but lets down a ladder to help others up, too” and former colleague Carl Bernstein calls her “a great reporter, a pioneer for all women in the news business.”  She has been on the forefront fostering diversity in the news media, and a dedicated mentor to young journalists.

Deborah Tannen is an award-winning author and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, best known for her groundbreaking book, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, which was on the New York Times best seller list for nearly 4 years and has been translated into 31 languages.  She points out that “Each person’s life is lived as a series of conversations,” and her books provide insight that can help us improve how we communicate and thus live more enjoyable lives.  In addition to her 16 books for scholarly audiences, her 7 other books for general audiences include, You Were Always Mom’s Favorite!: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives; You’re Wearing THAT?: Understanding Mothers and Daughters in Conversation; and Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work.  In 1993, she was the first woman appointed to the distinguished rank of University Professor at Georgetown University’s College of Arts and Sciences and is still one of the few women to hold that position.

Our two Health Policy Heroes are pediatrician Dr. Marsha Griffin from Texas and psychologist Dr. Cristina Muñiz de la Peña from New York, representing the many advocates who have succeeded in helping families separated at the border, reuniting children with their families, and improving those heart-breaking policies.