Remote Notes Interview: Communications Pro With MS Helping Others
John “CZ” Czwartaki, who has worked in the White House’s communications department, has posted that he has multiple sclerosis. He has started Survivors for Solutions. Its mission, from its website:
Survivors for Solutions seeks to preserve and protect the medical innovations that give people hope. It strives to value, celebrate, and put a human face to the impact of scientific breakthroughs and the policy that supports them. We endeavor to hold lawmakers accountable, ensure facts are presented accurately, and that the voices of survivors are heard.
John “CZ” Czwartaki
CZ generously agreed to a Q&A via email. I have only made minor changes for clarity, but have not otherwise edited his answers:
Tell us about Survivors for Solutions.
It’s a nonprofit, nonpartisan patient advocacy project fighting for common interests across all those who are challenged by illness. (Its goal is) to protect the hope of future cures and treatments, and bring the perspective of someone with 30 years of Washington experience (who happens to have a chronic, incurable disease) to a public policy debate affecting patients’ health.
What was it about your healthcare experience inspired this idea?
All of the accomplishments of my adult life — twenty years of marriage, four healthy kids, an amazing career — I credit to the researchers, doctors, and scientists who developed treatments to slow my MS. When I saw the hope afforded me by these breakthroughs was being put at risk by lawmakers in Washington, I had to speak out. Especially since it was upending 40 years of successful, bipartisan consensus with a purely partisan, unproven experiment. Where was the voice of those downstream of those policies?