Walden-Newman’s focus is women’s rights and health. She spends her days and nights working for the cause, volunteering with an outreach group that assists prostitutes.
Walden-Newman started her job with the National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Association in early October and said she made the jump from staffer to lobbyist because she wanted to play a more active role in budget and appropriations for Title X programs.
Enacted in 1970, Title X of the Public Health Service Act funds contraceptive services, supplies and education for nearly 4,500 clinics across the country. She hopes eventually to earn a graduate degree in public health.
In her first month of work, Walden-Newman has already begun lobbying and informing members of Congress about appropriations for family planning programs.
“I really wanted to focus on these programs that are going to become targeted because of sequestration and remind members of Congress how important these programs are,” she said.
Although she doesn’t sleep much between her volunteer work and her day job, her role with HIPS constantly reinforces her belief in the need to fund programs that offer sexual education and free condoms.
“When it’s three in the morning and I’m out in the van, I see the connection,” she said. “I think if the funding weren’t there, the van wouldn’t go out and these services wouldn’t exist. And these people would not be helped.”
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Rep. Bill Cassidy has his blood drawn by Alesha Barbour during a free hepatitis screening in the Rayburn House Office Building hosted by the Congressional Viral Hepatitis Caucus to recognize "National Viral Hepatitis Testing Day."
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