Q & A with Harriette Chandler, Massachusetts State Senator

The first woman to be elected to the Massachusetts State Senate, Senator Harriette Chandler has served as a state legislator for over 20 years. She is currently the Senate Majority Leader, Co-Chair of the Prevention for Health Caucus, and Co-Chair of the Oral Health Caucus. Since her early legislative days, Senator Chandler has been a member of the Reforming States Group (RSG), and has served on the RSG Steering Committee for 18 years. The Fund recently had the opportunity to speak to Senator Chandler about her experience with the RSG and its influence on her legislative work.

What health issues do you focus on in the Massachusetts Senate?

Health care has become one of the more challenging areas in the legislature today. There are so many different aspects of health policy—from mental health to tobacco use to long-term care; it affects everyone in our society. Health issues demand a certain expertise that most of us in the legislature don’t have. Were it not for the RSG, I’m not sure we would know where to turn. There hasn’t been any issue in health that hasn’t been touched on by the RSG.

We wanted to know about examples in which the RSG has had an impact on your work. You mentioned that Massachusetts’ Oral Health Caucus had its roots in the RSG. You also noted your state has learned from Colorado’s approach to handling recreational marijuana, and from midwestern and western states’ programs for fighting crystal meth production. Are there other examples?

Almost everything [that I’ve worked on in] health has had its roots somewhere along the way in the RSG. I feel a tremendous debt to the RSG for giving me the sources of information to have Massachusetts doing as well as it does in health policy.

There are a few other examples. As we all know, health care costs continue to creep up. We are very concerned. We’re putting together a committee—and the RSG is pointing us to other states that are also working on cost containment. We hope to learn from their example.

Through the RSG, I was introduced to a program called Mental Health First Aid that I brought to our state. I heard about how it was successful in Maryland and Missouri, where they were using the program. We now have it in Worcester and other cities and towns in Massachusetts—at schools and in police departments. It’s a type of train-the-trainer program in which laypeople are trained to spot mental health problems and how to get individuals to trained professionals.

There is no easy solution to the problem of opioids. But we’ve been talking about it at RSG meetings for a while. For instance, we were aware of people who doctor shop and pharmacy shop to satisfy their addiction. In Massachusetts, we put a database in place so they can’t do that as easily. These are things that states involved in the RSG have a bit of a handle on.

We’ve also had an opportunity to give back to states too. In Massachusetts, we started a Prevention for Health Caucus with an emphasis on preventive health strategies. For the last five years, we have been involved in getting our cities to compete for funds to work on obesity, asthma, and falls prevention, to name a few. I hope that, through RSG meetings, we have encouraged other states to work on prevention issues.

The RSG has recently started inviting delegations from the same states to attend meetings together. Have you participated in that?

Yes. Usually members of the executive and legislative branches don’t have time to work together. But these meetings encourage us to solve some of our problems together—because if we don’t work together, we can’t get anything done. We don’t work together as a general rule—but these meetings give us a chance to talk with our counterparts in the executive branch.

What are RSG meetings like?

RSG meetings are not junkets; they’re not a vacation. You begin at 8 am and you end by 5 pm. You work. And we come away with lots of ideas that help us do our jobs better. The RSG gives us the knowledge we need to be successful. I will never be able to thank the RSG enough. Once people attend, they become involved. They see exactly what they can learn. And the RSG doesn’t want anything in return from us except for us to be successful.

It’s good that the RSG exists. There is no other group that compares to it in terms of sharing and learning. You go to work hard. You learn a lot and are eager to put things into action when you return. You can develop the legislative issues that your state needs… you can have transformative legislation.