08/01/17  Portland, Ore.

Owen McCarty, Ph.D.,FAHA, represented Oregon in a Washington D.C. research advocacy event in July. He joined a group of 330 advocates who met with 284 legislative offices as part of the 2017 American Heart Association You're the Cure on the Hill. The team from Oregon included two patient advocates, Jane Staniford and Kellie Hill (pictured), as well as the Oregon AHA Director of Government Relations &Affairs, Christina Bodamer (left). They had a chance to meet with the offices of Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader and Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden. The focus of this year's You're the Cure was to advocate for an increase in funding for heart and stroke research from the National Institutes of Health and cosponsorship for the Furthering Access to Stroke Telemedicine (FAST) Act and Cardiac Rehab bills. McCarty is a professor and the interim chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the OHSU School of Medicine.