The Political is Personal: Examining the Role of Personal Connection to a Disease as an Access Point for Single-disease Interest Groups

Abstract

Approximately 133 million Americans live with a chronic illness (“The Power of Prevention”). Government funding through the National Institutes of Health and other programs are an important source of research funding for the doctors and scientists who study and treat these diseases and syndromes. I am one of those Americans and live with a disease that very few doctors specialize in and for which few treatments options exist, at least in part because of lack of funding. This experience led me to ask what lobbying strategies are effective specifically for interest groups that represent a single disease. Lobbying strategies are well studied, but less research has been done to examine the strategies used by interest groups representing smaller and very specific constituencies, such as those affected by a single disease.