Congressional PAD Caucus
PAD Caucus Mission
The Congressional Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) Caucus was formed in 2019 to educate Congress and communities about PAD while supporting legislative activities to improve PAD research, education, and treatment, with the goal of preventing non-traumatic amputations due to PAD and other related diseases.
What is PAD?
PAD involves the build-up of plaque inside the arteries of a patient’s lower extremities (i.e. legs and feet), and is a chronic, life-threatening condition. PAD is a risk for more than 30 million Americans living with diabetes and 84.1 million living with prediabetes. If left untreated, PAD can lead to critical limb ischemia (CLI) and amputation. Today, there are almost 20 million Americans who suffer from PAD and and estimated 200,000 of them suffer preventable amputations every year. Unfortunately, these rates of amputations is worse in minority communities. The amputation rate among Black Medicare beneficiaries is nearly three times higher than rate for other beneficiaries nationwide.
Policy Initiatives
To support our goal of preventing amputations, the PAD Caucus has identified key priorities for the 118th Congress, including the following:
- Reintroducing the Amputation Reduction and Compassion (ARC) Act.
- Requesting the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to review screening for PAD in at-risk patients.
- Encouraging the Administration to create an intragovernmental workgroup to implement a comprehensive amputation prevention program for PAD patients in Medicare, the Indian Health Service, and other federal programs based on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Preventing Amputations in Veterans Everywhere (PAVE) program.
PAD Caucus Co-Chairs
PAD Caucus Members
- Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
- Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE)
- Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC)
- Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL)
- Rep. Dwight Evans (D-PA)
- Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ)
- Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ)
- Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
- Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
- Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)
- Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)
- Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
- Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro (R-NY-9)
- Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)
- Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.(D-NJ)
- Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL-7)
- Rep. David Scott (D-GA)
- Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
- Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX)
- Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)
- Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL)
PAD Resources
What is PAD?
Source: Mayo Clinic
The Burden and Economic Cost of Peripheral Artery Disease
Source: The Sage Group
Racial Disparities in Care for Peripheral Artery Disease
Source: The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care
To join the PAD caucus or for more information
Please contact Elsie Guerrero at elsie.guerrero@mail.house.gov.