DETROIT — A Wayne State University professor has been selected as an Early Career Policy Ambassador (ECPA) by the Society for Neuroscience (SfN). Those chosen will engage in various advocacy initiatives in partnership with SfN.
Lana Ruvolo Grasser, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and in the Ben L. Silberstein Institute for Brain Health at Wayne State University, is one of 10 members chosen by SfN from a highly competitive applicant pool. The members participated in the society’s annual Capitol Hill Day, held on March 11 through13. The ECPAs represent many career stages and geographic locations. They were chosen for their dedication to advocating for the scientific community, their desire to learn more about effective means of advocacy, and their experience as leaders in their labs and communities.
“As the inaugural recruit to the recently launched Ben L. Silberstein Institute for Brain Health, Dr. Grasser is already making seminal and sustained contributions to the university, community and field of neuroscience,” said David Rosenberg, Ph.D., chair of psychiatry and behavioral neurosciences in Wayne State’s School of Medicine and co-director of the Ben L. Silberstein Institute for Brain Health. “This prestigious of award recognizes the very best and most promising neuroscience leaders of tomorrow. The focus of this award emphasizes participation and partnership with federal and legislative activities and priorities and is especially timely. We are all very proud of Dr. Grasser and look forward to her accomplishments to come.”
The ECPA program is a 10-month commitment designed to create an extensive network of neuroscience advocates. Ambassadors gain the necessary skills to advocate for science funding and other issues affecting the neuroscience field and to encourage those in their personal networks to join the conversation. Ambassadors will engage in at least two additional advocacy-related activities at their home institution and within their community.
“I think our expertise and our personal experience is needed most from those selected as ECPAs,” said Grasser. “We were selected based on our geographic regions and our scientific training and expertise in neuroscience. We are on the ground conducting lifesaving biomedical research, so we need to be the ones standing up in front of our elected officials and being a resource for them to share the facts and the data about the value of scientific research and why we need federal funding. By sharing our personal stories as constituents of the members we will be speaking with on the Hill, we can connect seemingly complicated and distal concepts to real-world impacts in our local communities that our officials have been elected to serve. Unfortunately, science policy and advocacy are not a common part of the curriculum for scientists and clinicians. Many in our field don’t see it as their responsibility to lift their voices to shape policy. But if we don’t, who will?”
Grasser said this role is more important now than ever before.
“I hope to learn effective strategies for advocating for scientific research and its funding to folks who may not have been supportive for such initiatives in the past,” said Grasser. “Now more than ever it is critical to identify points of shared concern to frame our message in a productive and meaningful way so that we can all benefit from lifesaving biomedical research funded by the federal government. Recent executive orders have threatened critical funding to sustain lifesaving biomedical research in the United States, as well as the educational institutions and hospitals in which this work is conducted. Over the next year, I think that expert scientists and clinicians standing up to raise their voice and use their expertise to advocate for science will be critical to building up trust in research and reversing federal funding freezes, reversing the indirect cost cap, and actually increasing the budgets for federal research agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.”
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