[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 16160]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   TRIBUTE TO JENELLE KRISHNAMOORTHY

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute and to extend my 
thanks to an extraordinary individual, Jenelle Krishnamoorthy, who has 
served on my staff, with one small interruption of service, for a 
decade.
  Jenelle came to my staff in the summer of 2003 as a fellow, later 
becoming a permanent staff member and eventually rising to lead my 
health policy team on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, 
and Pensions. From the time she arrived, it was clear that Jenelle was 
an exceptional talent--one possessing not just deep knowledge of health 
care and public health, but also with uncommon instincts about this 
institution and about how to accomplish great things in an increasingly 
divided Congress.
  Throughout my career, I have been guided by a conviction that our 
country does not have a health care system, but rather a sick care 
system. If you get sick, you get care. We spend far too much time and 
riches treating disease once it has occurred, and far too little 
preventing it in the first place. Among my first charges to Jenelle 
when she arrived on staff was to think about how we make America a 
wellness society, one in which we make the healthy choice the easy 
choice. How do we, I asked her, change our workplaces, our schools, our 
communities, our child care settings, and our health care system so 
that we prevent the onset of chronic disease, rather than patch and fix 
and treat once a person gets sick?
  Jenelle responded with a broad vision of a wellness society--a vision 
that has guided her work, and my own, for the past 10 years. Looking 
back over those 10 years, the breadth of what she has accomplished is 
truly remarkable.
  The Affordable Care Act is one of the great health laws of the last 
75 years. As my designee on that bill, Jenelle secured passage of a 
number of groundbreaking policy changes that have changed the landscape 
of our health care system. In particular, Jenelle was the primary 
drafter of the prevention title of that bill. As a result of that, 
every single American can now receive recommended preventive health 
care services absolutely free of charge. Routine services such as 
mammograms, vaccinations, diabetes and cancer screenings, among other 
things, are now cost free, forever, because of Jenelle's work.
  As part of that bill, Jenelle was also the intellectual force behind 
the Prevention Fund, which creates a public health partnership between 
the Federal Government and communities across the country by providing 
billions of dollars for communities to invest in proven preventive 
efforts such as tobacco cessation, childhood obesity prevention, HIV 
prevention, and public health workforce development. As a result, 
across the country, communities, from small towns in Iowa to our 
largest urban centers, are working together to weave health promotion 
into the very fabric of our communities and the lives of our citizens.
  Through her work on the Affordable Care Act, Jenelle also played a 
key role in expanding nutrition labeling to chain restaurants around 
the country, giving hundreds of millions of consumers access to 
critical nutrition information that they need to take control of their 
own health, and also successfully fought for new policies to promote 
breastfeeding.
  Jenelle's contributions to the health of our country go far beyond 
the Affordable Care Act. As the health policy director for the Senate 
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, Jenelle shepherded 
passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act, the most significant 
reform of our food safety system in the country in decades. This law 
strengthened the Food and Drug Administration with critical new 
authorities to protect Americans by establishing a better and more 
modern system for keeping our food safe from farm to fork.
  And just as she did with the food safety system, Jenelle also 
spearheaded efforts to improve the safety and quality of drugs and 
medical devices. In successfully leading committee passage of the Food 
and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, Jenelle helped 
ensure the safety of our drugs and medical devices, alleviate the 
effects of drug shortages and manufacturing problems, and implemented 
long sought reform to help bring critical drugs and medical devices to 
patients faster.
  Remarkably, these are just the highlights of Jenelle's 
accomplishments in the area of health policy and health promotion. Just 
in this Congress, Jenelle has led 16 bills into law, including bills to 
respond more quickly and effectively to public health disasters, to 
facilitate organ donation, to provide equitable funding to children's 
hospitals and ensure a steady supply of pediatric doctors, and to speed 
the approval of new sunscreens to protect Americans from skin cancer. 
Her efforts in the health arena in this Congress have made the HELP 
Committee one of the most productive in this Congress. For making me 
look good as the Chairman of the HELP Committee, I owe Jenelle a 
special debt of gratitude.
  Americans take for granted the safety of our food supply and our 
drugs and medical equipment. When people go to their doctors and 
receive a free, often lifesaving mammogram, they do not think of the 
reasons for it. When a smoker of several decades finally receives the 
help that he needs to quit so that he can watch his grandchildren grow 
up, he most likely does not pause to reflect on why he received free 
cessation services. But none of these things happened accidentally. 
They came to pass because of the heroic and humble efforts of a 
dedicated public servant, Jenelle Krishnamoorthy. For 10 years now, 
Jenelle has shown up for work in my office with the singular goal of 
improving the health of Americans. She has succeeded beyond measure. 
For that, I owe her my thanks, and so too do tens of millions of 
Americans.

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