As a nurse practitioner with over 40 years of clinical experience, a woman, and a survivor of domestic violence, I know the enormous impact that safety and access to health resources has on women’s lives and well-being.

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We need more women’s healthcare workers writing health policy that actually helps women. We need more healthcare practitioners working in policy who understand the lifelong impacts that violence has on survivors’ physical, emotional, and mental health, and on their ability to fully participate in society.

 

As a nurse and a woman, I consider myself pro-choice and pro-life. Folks assigned female at birth have an unalienable right to protect and make decisions about their own bodies, including sexual health and education and access to abortion. And more than that, I am anti-violence and pro-person. I am pro-child in the classroom, pro-concert attendee, pro-employee going to work, pro-baby enrolled on WIC, and pro-transgender athletes. We are all of us interconnected, and we need more caregivers in Congress to advocate for our communities’ fundamental health and safety needs.

Since my husband’s deployment to Iraq in 2003, I too often have witnessed the long-term mental and physical health impacts of warfare on servicemembers, and the many barriers standing between veterans and life-saving support. Suicidality among veterans is on the rise, particularly with veterans who are unhoused. Many veterans regularly face extensive wait times for appointments, and about half of veterans aren’t even enrolled in the VA health system. This is unacceptable.

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We have a duty to show up for servicemembers. We know where the gaps exist in the VA system: as an overloaded and underfunded system, veterans too often slip between the cracks and fail to receive adequate support. We ought to be supporting organizations who are already doing the work of connecting veterans to vital resources. We need to streamline referral processes. Months-long wait times for screenings and mental health interventions only work to further overwhelm veterans who are often already struggling to reenter civilian life.

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We must ensure that adequate and readily accessible healthcare facilities are in place, particularly in rural areas. As your representative, removing health system barriers for veterans will be one of my top priorities. No one should struggle to access necessary support, least of all individuals who have sacrificed so much for our country.

As the daughter of an orchardist, I was constantly impressed by my father’s diligence and commitment to producing good food for the local community. Now, in a time where industrial agriculture and factory livestock farms have become commonplace, we’ve seen how much the hard-working farm and ranch families in Eastern Washington have struggled to keep up with a rapidly changing market. Additionally, at a federal level, we’re witnessing an enormous decline of operating farms, with 7% of farms closing between 2017 and 2022, and Washington state losing almost 4,000 farms. Climate change, the impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and growing production costs continue to exacerbate the challenging and volatile conditions that farmers face every day.  

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As your congress representative, I will work to support existing safety net programs for farmers and ranchers, while streamlining insurance policy programs. We must ensure that agricultural workers are adequately educated about available insurance policies and resources, guarantee that policies are easy to access, and that payouts occur in a timely manner.

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In addition to protecting family farms, I’ll work to generate new income streams and introduce more farm-to-table opportunities. Finally, it is imperative that we create agricultural policy that reflects the real needs and experiences of farmers and farm workers, including fair labor laws and protections. Farming is at the core of our history as Eastern Washingtonians, and through continued collaboration with agricultural stakeholders, my hope is that our farms will continue to guide this region to prosperity in the future.