Friends,

I'm hosting a telephone town hall on Monday, December 7th to answer your Covid-19 questions and tell you about my work on behalf of the Seventh District in Washington. 

Dr. Danielle Scheurer and Dr. Gerald Harmon will be joining the call to provide expert advice on Covid-19 and the vaccines currently being developed. Dr. Scheurer is the Chief Quality Officer and Professor of Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, and a member of the SC Vaccine Committee. Dr. Gerald Harmon is a family medicine specialist who has practiced in coastal South Carolina for more than 30 years. He was elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees in June 2013 and elected board chair in 2018.

I hope you can join me! You can register online or dial in on Monday!

December 7, 2020

5:30 PM

Dial: 866-295-1745

Register Online: https://rice.house.gov/townhall

PREVENT DIABETES Act

This past Thursday I introduced the PREVENT DIABETES Act. Approximately 500,000 South Carolinians have diabetes. This legislation will expand virtual suppliers in the Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program (MDPP) to those in rural, minority, or medically underserved communities to help address disparities and improve lives. My goal is to create policies that give South Carolinians and all Americans access to high quality, efficient health care services under Medicare. MDPP expansion will help empower residents and families to make healthier choices, so we can prosper as a community. 

You can read the press release here.

According to the CDC, 13% of American adults have diabetes, including 26.8% of those aged 65 or older. Diabetes prevalence varies substantially by race/ethnicity, affecting 16.4% of Black adults, 14.9% of Asian adults, and 14.7% of Hispanic adults, versus 11.9% of White adults. Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in South Carolina. Inclusion of virtual suppliers in MDPP could help to address these disparities and improve outcomes for older Americans across the board.

The Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program expanded model is a structured intervention with the goal of preventing type 2 diabetes in individuals with an indication of pre-diabetes. The primary goal of the expanded model is at least 5 percent weight loss by participants. The study found that lifestyle changes resulting in modest weight loss sharply reduced the development of type 2 diabetes in people at high risk for the disease.

Coronavirus Vaccine

Through Operation Warp Speed, Moderna has produced a promising vaccine faster than ever before. This vaccine candidate has a 94.5 percent efficacy rate, according to preliminary results. This is a huge step towards defeating COVID-19. Recently, Pfizer and AstraZeneca announced that preliminary results also show their vaccine candidates to be more than 90 percent effective. With the Moderna vaccine candidate, we now have two vaccine candidates that appear to be safe and highly effective.

Both Pfizer and Moderna have already applied for Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA.

Vaccine distribution process will begin 24 hours after the FDA emergency use authorization is approved, and they will go directly to state, local and territorial public health agencies. There will be enough COVID-19 vaccines to protect 20 million of the most vulnerable Americans by the end of December, and they expect 100 million people to have received the vaccination by March of 2021.

TRIO Letter

I, along with 32 of my colleagues, sent a letter to House Appropriations Chairwoman Lowey and Ranking Member Granger to urge their support for COVID-19 supplemental appropriations to enable these institutions to continue to serve the interests of high-need students during this time of a pandemic and severe economic distress.

You can read the full letter here.