By Eric Ding
I'm a proud product of central Pennsylvania and a career public health scientist and I'm running to be your next Congressman.
I grew up in Cumberland County as the son of a teacher and a factory worker. My family wasn't rich. We immigrated to this country with next to nothing but the promise of the American Dream.
We shopped at the Salvation Army and Goodwill. In the summer, I relied on church sponsored camp programs to stay well-fed. There were some nights when we did not know where dinner was going to come from in the home we shared with 5 other families.
But we were never discouraged and we never lost hope because my family believed that if we worked hard enough, we could achieve the American Dream. The opportunities for a good education and fair paying jobs in Central Pennsylvania helped us achieve our American Dream. Now, I want to give back to the community that has given me so much.
When I was in high school, doctors discovered a life-threatening tumor the size of a baseball in my chest. My mom's union health insurance and the high-quality care provided by Hershey Medical Center saved my life. Without access to good healthcare, I would not be alive today.
That experience led me to dedicate my life to public health. I studied at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, earning doctorates in epidemiology and nutrition.
As a public health scientist, I took on drug companies that sold unsafe painkillers, designed an alert system that warns communities about water contaminants, and brought 6 million people together to fund cancer prevention research. Now I'm running for Congress to continue my fight for our families and to stop policies that put profits over people.
Right now, Congress has 222 lawyers, 18 bankers, and only 3 scientists. That's a problem. When Congress doesn't include people who know the value of science, science isn't valued.
We're seeing the results of that disregard right now. We have an ongoing outbreak of E. coli in our romaine lettuce, and so far, no one knows how this tainted produce got on our shelves. In cities like Flint, safe drinking water has been contaminated by lead. And asthma has been on the rise among every age group in America since the 1980s. Yet the current Administration has chosen to defund and de-staff important organizations like the EPA, FDA, and CDC.
It's time to end our government's affair with so-called "alternative facts." If elected to be your next Congressman, I will focus on evidence-based solutions to the pressing problems hurting working families. We need to confront issues like the opioid epidemic, income inequality, and rising health care costs. As a scientist, I am uniquely qualified to evaluate policies based on the evidence and not on politics.
I hope you will join me to take on the tough issues facing our district. If you believe that facts matter, then I am asking for your support to be your next congressman from PA-10.
Eric Ding, a public health scientist, is a candidate for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District. He writes from Camp Hill.