Anahita Dua, MD, MS, MBA, FACS, earliest memories as a surgical trainee came with the clang of trauma‐bay doors in Milwaukee, which, at the time, “happened to be one of the most segregated cities in the country.” Night after night, she treated one to four gunshot wounds, among a plethora of other injuries and diseases. “It was out of control,” she says.
She could repair vessels and stem bleeding, but she could not stitch together broken policies that funneled all these people into the hospital. Those haunting moments planted a seed—healing at the bedside is vital, but it’s not nearly enough.
The Realization: Medicine Meets Policy
Today, Dr. Dua is a vascular surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. During her tenure, she’s come to understand that clinical care alone addresses only a small part of patients’ needs.
“Politics—not in the divisive fashion, but in the deciding fashion—creeps into hospitals every day,” she says. “If I’m not a part of that political decision‐making, then I’m only dealing with a small sliver of things once they actually hit the ER, and I’m not able to take care of my patient in the full form.”
She argues that doctors who avoid politics are “not actually doing their job,” because policy shapes insurance, preventive care and patient access long before someone reaches the operating room.
Launching Healthcare for Action
In 2022, Dr. Dua founded Healthcare for Action to recruit and support healthcare workers running for public office. In essence, the organization is “a coalition of healthcare workers fed up with the inaction in government.”
Dr. Dua made one principle nonnegotiable: Healthcare for Action is not a single-issue organization. “We don’t demand of any of our candidates that they run on particular issues. The only requirement is that you are a Democrat and uphold democratic principles.” By embracing ideological diversity, Healthcare for Action mirrors the varied perspectives of communities across the US and the Democratic party itself.
Equipping Clinicians for Campaigns
Physicians and other healthcare workers often function as lone operators in medicine, but political campaigns demand teams. “Doctors tend to be a one‐man or one‐woman show. We do it all, but that’s not how it works when you run a campaign,” Dr. Dua says. a successful campaign takes a collective effort—fundraisers, compliance experts, media strategists, a campaign manager and more.
Campaign finance law poses another hurdle. “To a large extent, campaign success has become about how much money you have in the bank and how much name recognition you can get out of that.”
Healthcare for Action offers step‐by‐step guides on fundraising, legal compliance and messaging, and connects candidates with seasoned mentors to fill the networking gap many physicians face.
From Operating Rooms to School Boards and Congress
Since its launch, Healthcare for Action has guided dozens of clinicians into local, state and federal races. Electoral success often comes down to addressing community-specific concerns—for instance, an Alaskan physician candidate focused her platform on salmon farming rather than Medicaid cuts—and Healthcare for Action coaches candidates on how to identify and engage with the most relevant issues in their own districts.
By translating medical teamwork into political collaboration, clinician candidates learn to listen, negotiate trade‐offs and build consensus—just as they do in an ICU when balancing surgical risk, infection control and critical care.
Scaling Impact Over Personal Ambition
Though she once entertained a run for Congress to overhaul limb‐salvage policies, Dr. Dua realized that “even if I were to win the seat in Massachusetts, I would just replace a Democrat who’s already doing what I want them to do.” Instead, she chose to scale: “Why not get 20 people like me across the country?”
Once a potential candidate’s interest is kindled, Dr. Dua’s team shepherds them through every step—choosing the right election cycle, mapping district demographics and tailoring a strategy whether they’re a Democrat in a D+10 district or aiming to flip a GOP stronghold. Her vision is to build hundreds of clinician‐legislators who, drawing on their frontline medical expertise, can work together to reform health policy and advocate for Americans.
A New Era of Clinician‐Legislators
Dr. Dua believes health care professionals bring a unique ethic to politics. “We are the only profession I can think of where we don’t have a choice—we have to sit down and figure out what’s best for the patient, even if it means your ego moves to the side,” she says.
Amid today’s deeply polarized American political landscape, she trusts that the same skills that drive multidisciplinary rounds—listening, weighing evidence, compromising for patient well‐being—can steer legislative committees toward healthier communities.
The imperative for a physician and a policymaker, to her, are the same: to heal, to serve and to leave the world in better shape than she found it.
Listen to Dr. Dua on WO Voices podcast here!
