The Clinton Foundation unveiled a new initiative Monday to help state and local governments develop and enact nonpartisan policy solutions to improve health outcomes, especially for women and children, economic security, and democracy.
The foundation’s first new initiative in more than a decade, the Clinton Policy Institute has already begun convening political leaders from both parties, research experts, and Americans affected by the issues being studied to create new approaches to long-existing problems.
“Rising costs, economic uncertainty, rapid technological change, and growing pressures on our public institutions are making it harder for families to get ahead,” former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement to the Associated Press. “We created CPI because we believe there are still practical, evidence-based solutions that can improve people’s lives.”
CPI is building on its work with New York state in banning cellphones from schools in the past academic year. Though the institute did not technically exist last year when it teamed with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration on creating distraction-free schools in the state, the Clinton Foundation saw promise in its approach and decided to expand it before publicly announcing CPI’s creation. It’s a strategy that the foundation, also led by former President Bill Clinton and public health expert Chelsea Clinton, used when it launched the Clinton Health Access Initiative in 2004.
Zayn Siddique, former principal deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, will serve as CPI’s chief executive officer. Jennifer Klein, who was director of the White House Gender Policy Council under former President Joe Biden, will be CPI’s chair.
In New York, CPI helped create the Teen Tech Council so that students could help make the phone-ban program more effective. The result, according to Hochul’s office, was that educators found a marked improvement in classroom behavior and engagement.
“CPI is bringing together policymakers, researchers, business leaders, and community organizations to identify what works, build stronger policy networks, and help turn those ideas into policy,” Hillary Clinton said. “We’re taking a particular focus on states and local communities, where so much innovation is happening.”
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly praises CPI’s nonpartisan approach
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said a CPI conference on improving the lives of children earlier this month was “the best roundtable I’ve been involved with since becoming governor.”
Kelly, who will leave office in January due to term limits after serving two consecutive terms, said she was inspired by CPI’s nonpartisan approach to solving problems affecting children.
“I am a Democrat governor in what is considered a very red state,” Kelly told the Associated Press in an interview. “It became very clear to me that if I wanted to accomplish anything in my political life, I was going to need to do it in a bipartisan way.”
Kelly believes that, despite political polarization, CPI can succeed in finding nonpartisan solutions — especially to issues involving children and healthcare — and giving state leaders the research and other support to implement them.
“Every once in a while, you get people from both sides of the aisle who come together and crafted, maybe not sexy legislation, but something that really needed to be done,” Kelly said. “And they get it through.”
Jerome Adams, former U.S. Surgeon General in President Donald Trump’s first administration, agrees that nonpartisan solutions are possible to find. But he says the nonpartisan nature of the solutions has to be intentional.
“Health is inherently political,” said Adams. “When you talk about access to healthcare coverage, when you talk women’s health issues, particularly around the issue of abortion and contraception, when you talk about drug policy and whether you’re in favor of harm reduction, when you talk of firearm safety — all of these are inherently political issues.”
Former Surgeon General Adams sees broad support for children’s issues
That is complicated further, Adams said, because “we live in a country that is very binary, so every issue, no matter how nuanced, is, for purposes of elections, turned into black/white, yes/no, all or none.”
However, Adams said CPI has already found a way to get bipartisan buy-in for some of its solutions to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In 2020, the state of California launched the ACEs Aware initiative to begin screening for ACEs — which include abuse, neglect, and household challenges — and treating them early to reduce the impact and the cost to the state later.
Through CPI, Adams was asked to become the co-chair of the National Leadership Council for the ACE Resource Network in June in an effort to bring California’s work treating ACEs to other states.
“I’m very interested in work that has proven and practical solutions,” he said. “We bring in states and say, ‘Hey, let’s look at the best evidence in terms of what works around adverse childhood experiences and state level policy and then try to implement it in your state’.”
That strategy has led Republican-led states like Utah and Georgia to consider parts of Democrat-led California’s work on the issue, Adams said.
He said it’s a sign that CPI’s approach works and can be expanded to other areas.
The Clinton Foundation hopes that will be the case.
“Too many people have lost faith that progress is possible,” Hillary Clinton said. “But across the country, leaders are developing innovative policies that are strengthening families and communities. Those ideas deserve to be shared and scaled.”
