Perspective
Sunday, January 28, 2018 n contact: suzanne cassidy, 717-291-8694, scassidy@lnpnews.com
e also inside: generation next
Women face barriers to running for office but can rise above them
Ann Womble
Special to LNP
We could fill a notebook with the
names of the men who have repre-
sented Pennsylvania in Congress
over the years.
But we’d need just an index card
to write the names of the seven
women who have represented the
commonwealth in the U.S. House
of Representatives. And three of
those women filled seats left vacant
by the deaths of their husbands.
Not a single woman from Penn-
sylvania has ever been elected to
the U.S. Senate.
In 2018, women make up just
Hilda Shirk
special to LNP
Community health centers
need funding — and soon
The waiting room of our com-
munity health center is thousands
of miles from the U.S. Capitol, but
what happens under that dome is
affecting our patients’ health.
Right now as part of the federal
health centers program, South-
East Lancaster Health Services
is subject to a funding cut of 70
percent of federal dollars begin-
over half the population in Penn-
sylvania but never have occupied
even 20 percent of the seats in
the General Assembly and only a
smattering of statewide elected
offices, according to the Center for
American Women and Politics at
Rutgers.
Pennsylvania currently has no
women in its 20-member congres-
sional delegation, which consists
of two U.S. senators and 18 mem-
bers of the U.S. House. And we’ve
never had a woman governor.
And Pennsylvania — the birth-
place of American democracy
— ranks 39th among the states
when it comes to the number of
women serving in its state Legis-
lature. Of the 50 state senators, a
scant seven are women; of the 203
members of the state House, just
41 are women.
The truth is, when women run
for office they are as likely as men
ning April 1, a significant funding
cliff that translates to a loss of $1.5
million per year for SouthEast.
We have to make hard choices
to save costs and keep our doors
open. Running a health care busi-
ness in the best of times involves
continual adjustments to embrace
new opportunities, retool for qual-
ity improvements, and to meet the
to be elected. But — until this
year, which appears to have the
makings of a watershed year for
women pursuing elective office
— there have simply been many
fewer women than men who de-
cide to run.
The barriers
Why? Is it the nature of politics
in general, barriers to entry in our
electoral system, or even some-
thing as mundane as occupational
preference? I believe all these
factors are involved.
I talked to some of my women
friends to get answers. A few of
them have been or are elected of-
ficials, and a few have considered
running. Most of them, however,
had never given it a thought. I was
more interested in gut reactions
than a scientific study. Here are
three main messages I heard, and
changing needs of our patients.
These decisions are much more
difficult to make while we face
funding insecurities.
Our health center is not alone.
The federal Department of Health
and Human Services itself has
projected that the impact of the
funding cut will result in the
closure of 2,800 health center lo-
cations, elimination of more than
50,000 jobs, and a loss of access to
medical and dental care for more
than 9 million patients.
The disruption is already
evident. More than 70 percent of
health centers recently surveyed
said they will institute a hiring
freeze, and nearly half (43 per-
cent) say they will cut services as a
result of the health center funding
cliff cut, according to a recent sur-
vey by the National Association of
Community Health Centers.
The irony is there is broad agree-
ment in Congress that a cliff fix is
some thoughts from my own years
of involvement in politics.
— “Politics is dirty business and
I want no part of it. I get satisfac-
tion from my family, my job and
my community involvement.”
Granted, this view is common
among men as well as women. But
women seem particularly inclined
to want to focus on family obliga-
tions and school and church-type
volunteerism as they are rearing
their children. Many, of course,
have full-time paying jobs, too.
Whatever their employment
status, it remains a reality that
women still do most of the
WOMBLE, page E4
n Lancaster Township resident Ann
Womble is a former chair of the Lan-
caster County Republican Committee
and former community member of the
LNP Editorial Board. She is a Millersville
University trustee.
needed, and a path forward has
been set. Lawmakers in the House
and Senate have introduced bipar-
tisan legislation to extend fund-
ing for health centers and other
programs. But we’re up against
a host of factors that include a
ticking clock and a busy legislative
calendar.
Why should this matter? Be-
cause health centers like ours save
lives.
At SouthEast, we are part of a
nationwide network that started
more than 50 years ago to provide
quality primary medical and dental
care in places where doctors and
services were scarce or nonexis-
tent. We are the family doctor and
dentist to more than 27 million
Americans in communities all over
SHIRK, page E4
n Dr. Hilda Shirk is president and CEO of
SouthEast Lancaster Health Services, a
nonprofit community health center.