Partners In Health: Engage is a non-profit grassroots organization partnered with Partners in Health, a global non-profit.

“We work towards equitable global healthcare,” said Nicole Merino, PIHE president and senior microbiology and pre-nursing major. “That really is our main focus. We work directly with Congress. So we’ve already had a few meetings with Congress this year, thankfully, and it’s been going very well, communication-wise.”

This club is a globally funded act PIHE wants Congress to enact to fund research, better cures and accessibility worldwide, Merino said.

“WSU is also very heavily inclined towards politics being a blue school within a red city and so since our city is quite red, I really wanted to push the education aspect of what we can do towards communicating with Congress on global health issues,” she said.

PIHE is run under a worldwide organization.

“So I really wanted to just put ourselves on that map, and to really show that we care too about these issues, not on a small scale on a large scale,” Merino said.

When it comes to politics within the club they try to remain as neutral as possible, she said.

“I wanted to push gray, so whether someone was more red or more blue, I want those opinions in this team to be able to communicate something that’s better for all sides,” Merino said.

The election has also sturred up their process with the initiative.

“For example, Trump gets elected, he’d want something to be hurried up. We need as much as we can, but he won’t really be looking towards the global health aspect side. So that’s what we have to push as hard as we can,” she said.

PIHE sent Merino to Washington D.C. this past summer to meet with Rep. Suzanne Bonamici and Rep. Maria Cantwell.

“Because of those meetings, it really kind of showed me the scope of how far we can go in terms of Congress, I thought we were really just like a small scale, but I didn’t know how large scale it was until I was there in the capital,” she said.

The entire PIHE club is  committed to creating change in the healthcare field, especially when it comes to the End Tuberculosis Now Act.

“Tuberculosis has a global effect, and it is been pretty constant within our human race for centuries, and to this day it is the world’s top infectious killer. The only reason why COVID had that title for two or three years was that they stopped looking at TB and everything that was respiratory they counted as COVID,” senior pre-med major Sara Burres said.

Choosing tuberculosis is prominent right now because the world is moving away from everything COVID-related, the world is seeing how TB has negatively impacted everyone in the four or five years it has not been worked on, she said.

“That is, in my opinion, lazy medical practice,” Burres said.

Savannah Khal, PIHE advocacy lead and senior biochemistry and spanish major, said one of the saddest parts about TB is it attacks mostly under-developed immune systems, such as older people and children.

“I think this is something that a lot of pre-meds should focus on, is not just, you know, learning about diseases, but actually seeing the impact that they have on people’s lives on the daily,” Khal said. “Because I think that’s also part of doing harm. Hippocratic Oath is to advocate for health because I think at the end of the day, the founding principle of this clause is that health should be a right, it is not currently a right in many places in the world, including the U.S.”

She believes the club is all about learning about how diseases impact people.

The reason to bring attention to TB is because it would never happen if not now, Merino said.

“Something that I love to say is that silence is like lying. If you know something and you choose to stay silent. That’s the lie itself. You know, not choosing to act and expecting someone else to act, it just stops the accountability within oneself,” Merino said.

PIHE is overall just hoping to make a change.

“Injustice has a cure,  it really does. You’ll see all types of diversity when it comes to this organization and we are pushing for the better,” Merino said.

The End Tuberculosis Now Act has passed the Senate and now PIHE is working with the House of Representatives to pass the measure.